Floppy Disk Fail (80)

[Tazman]

This one has me stumped .

I'm working on three identical computers right now. The floppy drives were disabled in the BIOS for security reasons. I enabled the floppy drive on the server (so I could Ghost it). I saved and rebooted with the Ghost boot disk and get:

Floppy Disk Drive Failure (80)

I've had it before but it's usually from me not paying attention when doing a build and having the cables wrong . The first thing I do is open the computer (I never opened these, didn't build them). I check the floppy wiring - OK. Humph . I figure the drive is bad or the cable is bad. Whatever, I wanna Ghost the drive before I worry about a floppy drive that's never used.

So I pull the drive and bring it over to another computer (it's clone brother) and put it in that (unhooking the other drive), slap in the boot disk (already enabled the floppy in the BIOS) and boot the computer. Same results as above .

Now I go over to the third one and don't bother opening it, just enableing the floppy in the BIOS. Same thing . Now I'm pi$$ed 'cuz I goota lug the computer back to the shop 75 mile round trip) and Ghost it there.

So, my question;

What are the chances of the floppy controller being bad on three identical boards? The boards are DFI CW35-S revision C1 and I did all of the usual (unusual) diagnostics on the server that I brought back to the shop. I swapped out the drive with a known good drive and a known good cable and still the same.

I guess I'm stumped because I never had a bad IDE / floppy connector on the motherboard - let alone three.

I also want to note that the hard drive (Maxtor 20GB ATA 100) was connected to the motherboard via an ATA 33 CDROM cable on all of the computers (I've since changed that).

Do y'all think it was the Jamoke who put these Clowns, er, Clones together and somehow managed to do comething to the floppy controller or is it ME and I'm overlooking something of it's a motherboard issue??

Opinions?

TIA

Mike

[krohnjw]

Just a thought, to rule out the obvious, but have you tried a known working floppy in the computers? He may have just given you junk floppy drives

[Brainchild]

have yopu checked to see if the floppy controller was enabled in the BIOS ?

[lynchmob]

The odds are WAY against all 3 fdds going south at the same time.I'm thinking there has to be a bios issue here.
I'd check everthing related to the fdd in bios,eg:
Do you think they disabled the IRQ for the floppy in bios?
There are a lot of settings re the fdd in the bios.They could have disabled everything related to it.
lynch

[JohnE.]

Have you tried resetting the CMOS? I had a similar problem recently on a friends sysem I was working on and this did the trick. Took me all darn day to figure it out too, lol.

JohnE.

[PresterJohn]

on a lot of the newer bios there are several options pertaining to the floppy which might apply to your problem...

1. enable the floppy (which you did already i gather)
2. check the boot order of your devices: should be floppy first, cd-rom second, hard disk third.
3. there's a separate option to "enable boot from floppy" which you should check to make sure it's enabled (usually under the security menu).

[sixf00t4]

now just because i am a junior member, doesnt mean i am full of crap, but...i have a floppy drive that will only work if the ribbon is put with pin 1 away from the power. It worked fine for 3 months with the red striped towards the power, and then one day it just stopped. after hours and hours of tinkering i got annoyed and just flipped the ribbon the wrong way. it worked. one downside though, the light is always on. and it is always on with the ribbon cable the correct way too, but the drive doesnt work. so what i am trying to suggest is to try and flip the ribbon cable.

[sixf00t4]

HAHA WOO HOO!!!! i am not a junior member anymore!!!

[Brainchild]

congrats 6'4, not o crap a thread here

^BUMP^

[Tazman]

krohnjw - I threw out a couple of 98, 98 & MA Startup disks (not that old) and created new ones - still no-go.

brainchild - I'm almost 99% sure I did (I usually would check something like that but that 1% of doubt comes from a very long week).

lynchmob, JohnE., & PresterJohn - I started to lean towards the BIOS issue / problem just because of having put a new cable and drive and it still didn't work. I didn't think to test the drive from the computer in another one (probably would've saved alot of hassle).

sixf00t4 - Congrads!!! . That's a weird floppy ya got there - I wouldn't have thought it would work.

So here's the scoop....

I got even more upset that I'm mostly missing the race as I tincker with this problem and two formats at the same time and Gordon winning so I just reset the BIOS and went over every setting, rebooted and walla...........

It's freakin' working!

My guess that I might not have checked the floppy disk controller enabled or that the new cable \ drive or the reset did it. I would like to think that I'm not that tired I wouldn't thoroughly check all of the BIOS settings. The original ribbon cable is bad - I did check that. I suppose that I could put the old floppy drive in another computer but maybe I just don't wanna know .

All - Much thanks

Now that I have already Ghosted the drive on another computer and wasted hours figureing out why the floppy drive wouldn't work, now I'm gonna diable it (not my choice), and get a beer .

Maybe it's about time to dig up that old "Lets Party" thread out of the community .

Mike