1.2Mb floppy problem

[ff]

I wonder if any kind reader has a comment or suggestion for my problem:

I've got a legacy 5 1/4 inch 1.2 Mb floppy drive, plus legacy data on
matching floppy discs. I've just put togther a machine based on:
VA 503+ motherboard
Cyrix MII 333 Mh cpu
Win98
and find that 5 1/4 drives act strangely (I've tried three different ones,
all of which work ok elsewhere so it's this motherboard which is
implicated). Symptoms: although 1.2 Mb disks can be read ok when I'm in
win98 in gui mode, I can't boot from a 1.2Mb disc in the drive, and it won't
read 1.2 Mb disks in real mode (if I restart in DOS, or use startup menu to
go to command prompt only) but gives 'general failure' error. Moreover if
I've tried a read in real mode the drive won't thereafter work in gui mode,
and a 3 1/2 inch drive which I'm using as b: also stops being able to read
floppy disks. Finally, 360k disks seem to work ok all the time (except of
course I can't put all the booting files of win98 on a 360k floppy disk, but
I can boot into dos5).

Any suggestions?

best wishes

ff

[ff]

[Lane Lewis]

Get the data off them then take them out of your machine. 3.5 floppys are
bad enough.

Lane

"ff" <ac...@friendindeed.co.uk> wrote in message
news:tnm20sn...@xo.supernews.co.uk...

[Hank Oredson]

"ff" <ac...@friendindeed.co.uk> wrote in message

news:tnm20r9...@xo.supernews.co.uk...

How is the 1.2M floppy set up in the BIOS?
I have a couple Win98 machines with 1.2 floppies, and have no trouble
reading or writing them in DOS, in a DOS box, or in Win98.
Have not tried booting from them.

--

... Hank

http://horedson.home.att.net

[Steve M]

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ff <ac...@friendindeed.co.uk> wrote:

>I've got a legacy 5 1/4 inch 1.2 Mb floppy drive,

>5 1/4 drives act strangely (I've tried three different ones,

>all of which work ok elsewhere so it's this motherboard which is
>implicated). Symptoms: although 1.2 Mb disks can be read ok when I'm in
>win98 in gui mode, I can't boot from a 1.2Mb disc in the drive, and it
won't
>read 1.2 Mb disks in real mode (if I restart in DOS, or use startup menu to
>go to command prompt only) but gives 'general failure' error. Moreover if
>I've tried a read in real mode the drive won't thereafter work in gui mode,
>and a 3 1/2 inch drive which I'm using as b: also stops being able to read
>floppy disks. Finally, 360k disks seem to work ok all the time (except of
>course I can't put all the booting files of win98 on a 360k floppy disk,
but
>I can boot into dos5).

If 360K floppies can be read in the 1.2M drives, this points to the signal
on pin 34 that tells the computer when the floppy has been changed, the DC
(disk changed) signal. 1.2M and 3.5" drives generate it, but 360K drives
don't. I don't remember if the computer expects it from 1.2M drives when
they're in 360K mode. Now, here's a wierd one - some 1.2M drives allow the
DC line to be configured in different ways, and one of those makes DC true
whenever a disk is present and spinning, but that causes confusion for the
computer. If you can't figure out how to make the signal normal, cover the
pin 34 finger with Scotch tape to make the computer ignore it. This may
cause the computer to ignore disk changes (a way out of this in DOS is to
hit CTRL-C; I don't know the Windows solution).

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[J Yazel]

------------------------------------

The drive could be a 360k drive. If so, you won't be able to
read 1.2 mb diskettes with it. Go to a used computer strore and
get a 1.2 mb drive. If the face-plate is higher than a CD-Rom's
face-plate, then it's probably a 360k drive.

I assume that you have made sure that the BIOS entries for
the drives match the drives.

Jack

[Walt]

The old 5 1/4" drives had terminators. Check to make sure that
the drive at the _end_ of the cable has a terminator, and that
any other drives on that cable, do _not_ have a terminator.

[ff]

Success!
Many thanks to the kind souls who posted suggestions re. 1.2 Mb floppy
drive. Whilst checking-out these various ideas (cables, jumpers etc.) I
noticed that I had set the bios setup cmos to 'floppy drive mode 3 support
enabled'. When I reset this value to 'disabled', lo the 5 1/4 drive worked
fine, including use as boot device.

many thanks to all posters, best wishes,
ff

>> .......Symptoms: although 1.2 Mb disks can be read ok when I'm in

> >win98 in gui mode, I can't boot from a 1.2Mb disc in the drive, and it
won't

> >read 1.2 Mb disks in real mode......<etc.etc.snip>

[Dogbert]

What does the "door" look like? If it is not the kind that twists
clockwise, the drive may only be a 360KB floppy drive. The doors on the
older drives flip down like a garage door.

"ff" <ac...@friendindeed.co.uk> wrote in message
news:tnm20r9...@xo.supernews.co.uk...

[Dogbert]

I have never seen a floppy with a terminator.

"Walt" <Wa...@Early.com> wrote in message news:3B7C1E28...@Early.com...

[Dogbert]

FYI, according to my motherboard manual, mode 3 floppy support was used on
some Japanese drives, and allowed you to format a 3.5" floppy as 1.2MB,
instead of 1.44". Basically, your BIOS was assuming the floppy drive was a
1.2MB 3.5" floppy, not a 5.25".

"ff" <ac...@friendindeed.co.uk> wrote in message

news:tnq4gak...@xo.supernews.co.uk...

[Jim Helfer]

I recall that old Compaq Deskpros did. Lokked like a little resistor with
about half a dozen pins.

-Jim

"Dogbert" <NOS...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:%_qp7.24114$Uf1.2...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...

[Dogbert]

That's Compaq for ya.

"Jim Helfer" <jhe...@non.wtwarch.com> wrote in message
news:3ba64261$1...@athena.netset.com...

[JB]

That little resistor with about a half dozen pins is also known as a
resistor network (or SIP - for it's packaging). JB