I guess this is a really silly question, but is the floppy drive cable
plugged in backwards? I don't remember any keying, though that might
differ from motherboard to motherboard. If worse comes to worse I can
remove the floppy drive from the frankenstein machine if you want to
do a direct substitution test.
(another gray-haired guy)
(who has an old TEAC simulsync deck...)
On Apr 28, 2008, at 5:52 PM, Howard Sanner wrote:
Quoting Howard Sanner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
However, the other fly in the ointment is that the floppy drive
stopped
working. This was a couple days after it had last been used to make
an
MS-DOS boot floppy. I swapped in another drive, which worked long
enough to boot DOS twice. Then it stopped, too. So I don't know if
it's
a cable or the disk controller (which is on the motherboard). I'm
also
not really sure how to test it.
Given the flaky (to be charitable) floppy, I wonder if the problem is
the drive or the drive controller.
OK, the latest, delayed by a horrific couple of weeks at the office,
is that the floppy ribbon cable had become unplugged from the
motherboard. Duh.
Now the floppy spins, which is a step in the right direction.
However, it cannot read or format diskettes. I tried under DOS and
Linux. Under DOS I get an Int 0x24 error; trying to format a disk
generates the message that track 0 is bad. Under Linux mount never
returns and gives back the system prompt.
So something is still very wrong. Is there someplace in the Md.
suburbs I can get a floppy ribbon cable? Does Radio Shack have that
sort of thing? Or maybe Mark Electronics?
All suggestions gratefully received. It's times like this that I
wish I had gotten "into" hardware.
Thanks.
BTW, if any of you are interested in associating a face with my
moronic posts, I'll be recording Haydn's Nelson Mass at St. Andrew's
Episcopal (the one behind the Md. Book Exchange) Sunday afternoon at
4 p.m. It's a concert open to all. Free, but I've never been to a
church concert yet where an offering wasn't taken, and I don't
expect this one to be the first. Full disclosure: I'm not a member
of the church, and I do the recordings pro bono; so I have no
interest in their continued success. I'm the gray haired, overweight
guy with a full beard and wire-rimmed glasses.
Howard Sanner
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
