Floppy Drives

[Morganz0r]

Hey everyone I know what you're thinking.
"The date can't be right, what's a floppy for"
Well I've been having this problem. I needed to install the intel drivers to run my raptors in raid. I just got my floppy and everything, plugged in and powered on but it says insert disk when one is already in place.
If I right click in my computer it takes a very long time to load and says RAW as its format.

It is enabled in the bios as the 1.44mb version. Did I miss something or is my floppy just broken?

 

[Morganz0r]

I would just like to make sure before I RMA and have to pay for shipping again. The little green light is on, the 4 pins are connected. One thing I've noticed is that the pins that go into the floppy will work either way. Meaning I can unplug the cable and put it in upside down and it still fits...that seems odd.
Is there anything I can do to be sure it is defective and not just my human error? Thanks

 

[RichPLS]

Yes, one end of the cable goes to the motherboard, and usually can go only one way, and the end that has the twisted wires in the cable goes to the floppy drive, and sometimes can go either way.
If it is not working, check cable connections, or try reversing the cable to the floppy drive.
The issue you are experiencing can occur if the cable is indeed reversed.

 

[Morganz0r]

I've found out what the problem isn't, but that only means I don't know what the problem is. It's not the DOA floppy because I pulled a working floppy. I think something must be screwy in my BIOS but I have no idea what it could be? It is enabled to the 1.44mb. When I put a floppy in it makes a slight noise but nothing will write to it. It just says please insert floppy...any ideas?

 

[g-paw]

Most of the time I've run into this problem it was the data cable, most of the time it somehow got loose at one end or the other, even though I checked the cable connection time and time again. If you haven't done so, try a different data cable. I've also unplugged the Floppy, booted into Windows, then turned off the machine and re-installedd the Floppy. You could also disconnect all your other drives and try to boot off the Floppy, e.g., Windows 98 Start Up disk or your hdd mfg diagnostic disk, I think once or twice it had something to do with the way I had my hard drives set up in the BIOS. At least for me, getting a Floppy to work is huge mystery, just keep doing things until it works even when it doesn't make sense.

 

[Datablitz]

Apart from the data cable, the power cable can be most of the times be plugged upside down. The main symptom of that is that the green light remains lit all the time. You might wanna check that out.

 

[lordaardvark2]

OMG i've decided that floppies are the most evil of all evils

i've been struggling for days with a similar issue, getting drivers onto a compy with an archaic floppy disc. all i can say is floppies suck. depending on what OS you're running, you might wanna try a usb key if you've got one. assuming your old machine is 98 like mine, it WILL NOT under any circumstances recognize a usb key, so you basically lose like i do. i don't have trouble with the format, its just that whenever i'm on the computer needing the drivers, i get a "cyclic redundancy check" error message. AH! so frustrating.

well, i'll be interested to see if any solutions here can help me out. i'm sorry that i don't have any aid to offer, but i myself need the aid. if you think you can help my dillema, there's more on it here:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/drivers-NOOO-ftopict204629.html

sorry for the diversion. i hope someone can answer our pleas for help!

 

[UC7]

I have felt like an idiot several times just because I built the computer with the floppy cable connected upside down.

The above poster is correct. You wil usually see a solid light on the drive once the computer is started, if the cable is upside down. The light will not go off like it usually is supposed to. If you are even more stupid (like me) you will then insert a disc into that drive and try to read it. This usually destroys that disc, for good, in my own experience.

Why use floppies? For some reason I still run into situations with work, and helping with friends' computers where I need to put something on a disc. My last use was to flash a BIOS on an old computer that would only take it from a floppy and not a USB drive. Strange eh?

 

[Morganz0r]

My power cable is in the right way, and so is the 20 pin connector. (it has little arrows I just noticed) So either, my cable is bad, or every floppy disk I have is bad (10.) I can't say it is the fdd because the other one I tried worked but had the same problem with my computer. What a nightmare, perhaps I could remove all of these issues with an external drive?
Very frustrating

P.S.
I've found this
Hi,
This may or may not solve the issue, but if you haven't tried it, here are steps:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
2. Under Computer Management (Local), click Disk Management.
3. In the list of drives in the right pane, right-click the new drive and then click Change Drive Letter and Path(s).
4. Click Change, and in the drop-down box, select a drive letter for the new drive that is not assigned to a mapped network drive.
5. Click OK, and then click OK again.

The above is from Microsoft, dealing with mapped network drives, which can cause an issue similar to yours.

I noticed when I go into the disk management disk d shows up (my dvd burner) but disk a, my floppy does not. Hmmm..seems like I can't read a disk because my computer doesn't know I have a floppy drive?
I also heard something about deleting the controller, not sure if that works.
Any kind of information I could find was all about floppy drives not reading disks with data on them, I haven't tried that as I need this to write my raid drivers. Tssk tsssk hope this was coherant, seems lots of people have had trouble with these archaic devices.