Floppy Drive F?

[CHAMP1]

I'm trying to get my backup computer running and I recently formatted C. I just noticed there's something strange about the two floppy drives - one is of couse A: but other one is shown as "Removable Drive F". Why did someone set it up as "F" instead of say "B" (some computers used to have two floppy drives A: and B: which actually appeared in the Bias as two separate hard 3-1/2 1.44 drives so they could copy from one floppy to another. What would be the purpose of having a Removable F floppy drive? Should I go into (obviously I'd rather not) the bias and try to change it there (or would it even show up there?).

Speaking of Drives, I keep trying to install a simplistic card game (old one) and it keeps saying Close door to Drive D" (which is the CD ROM). The game I'm trying to install is on a 3.5 floppy disk, not a CD ROM disk and although I've installed this game many, many times over the years on my own computer, it has never said that. Of course, once it's makes the comment Close the door to Drive D, it's stops installing.

 

[CHAMP1]

I want to add this further info. if it will help. I found in CMOS Setup:
Primary Master Size 1282 Cyls 621 Head 64 Precomp 0 Landz 2483 Sector 63 Mode LBA.
Primary Slave; Secondary Master Secondary Slave all say "Auto" only. Nothing set for anything but Primary Master.
Drive A: 1.44M, 3.5 in. Drive B: None
Floppy 3 Mode Support Disabled
Base Mem. 640k
Extended Mem 31744K
Other Mem 384k
Total Mem 32,768k
CPU 233mHz; SCSI/IDE PCI/VGA Palette Snoop Disabled(??) should it be disabled.
OS/2 Onboard Memory 64M Disabled??
I don't know if you need the rest of what's in the setup. But as you can see Floppy B is not enabled. I also went to MSD and DOS shows A,B,C,D & E. It does show 2 CDROM drives. It does show the B even tho its disabled. So, it's only Windows that's showing the Removable F. Is it because second floppy drive wasn't assigned so it gave it the F letter? I will set the B floppy to show. I've never changed those setting before, but I will if you walk me through how to change it. And, if I should do that, should I reformat C: to get rid of windows and reload that? Thanks for your help. Since there are two floppy I'm surprised the Award BIOS wouldn't already set it up to read and enable the B floppy drive. Please advise.

 

[RICHINMINN]

I can see where the disk configuration might be confusing.

The reason the system shows both A: and B: drives is because a DOS-based system was able to use a single 1.44MB floppy disk for both input and output. If you issued a command like:
DISKCOPY A: B:
it would prompt you to insert the source diskette in the floppy drive, and would then read its entire contents into memory. It would then prompt you to put the destination diskette in the floppy drive, and would then write the data stored in memory onto this new diskette. You could also read files from two different diskettes, and the system would prompt you to "Insert the diskette for Drive A:" when it needed to read from the first diskette, and then prompt you to "Insert the diskette for Drive B:" when it needed to read from the second diskette.

Drive B: is, in essence, a "phantom" drive.

The drive F: that you describe could show up if the second floppy drive happened to be an LS-120 drive (made by Panasonic/Matsushita), which is able to be used as a regular 1.44MB floppy drive, as well as a high-capacity 120MB diskette drive (using unique high-capacity diskettes, of course!). When you accessed this drive in its 1.44MB mode, it showed up as drive B:, but when you wanted to use it as a 120MB drive, that drive was assigned to a new drive letter, usually one higher than the previous highest drive letter on your system, and is described as a "removable media" drive. But you don't have a second floppy drive installed, I take it. Maybe there WAS a second drive (an LS-120) installed in the system, at some time.

Hope this helps...

Rich (in Minn.)

 

[CHAMP1]

I went into the BIOS to see what it said. it showed the second floppy as None - instead of B. I went into MSD and saw that DOS sees Drives A,B,C,D and E. D&E being CDROM I went back to the BIOS to change the second floppy from None to 3.5, but my left right arrows which should have allowed me to change it just dropped me to the next line, as do the up/down arrrows. I tried "enter" on the 2nd floppy line and that just went to the next line; I even tried "tab" same thing. It might be my keyboard which has been sticking a lot. I'm going to replace it and try to reset the BIOS so the second floppy shows B: Since DOS sees B, the only place it shows removable F for that drive is in Windows. I have full 6.2.2 DOS before Windows and as I said it's reading "B" for that second floppy and BIOS shows the second floppy as None. Strange??

 

[edfair]

How about using pageup or pagedn to change the setting.
Or numeric + .

Richinminn may have the right idea about the ls120. Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[CHAMP1]

Thanks so much. I'll try the page up - page down as soon as I get home. Never thought of that. I'm sure you're right. Probably right about the ls120 too because when my husband rebuilt this computer (5-1/2 yrs ago) he was talking about zip drives and read/write cds so maybe he was getting this tower read for that. But I'm going to try to get BIOS to change B: drive using above. Never heard of the numeric +. Don't know if you putting numb lock on & using plus sign. I did try using the numeric pad for those arrow keys. Page up/down's probably the answer. Thanks tons.

 

[CHAMP1]

The page up/down worked. I changed the B from none to 3.5 option, but when I rebooted, the reboot stopped at the last sentence which read "Floppy Disk(s) failure", so I rebooted and went back into bios and reset the 2nd floppy to "none" and it rebooted fine. Guess I'm stuck with a wierd second floppy which was probably set up as some kind of zip drive. Thanks for your advice. You win some, you lose some.

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

LS120 drives look very simialar to the standard 3.5 1.44 drives. my guess would be that you have one... on the note that drive b was a phamtom drive is wrong, older computers also came out with 2 floppy drives a 3.5 drive and the larger 5.25 drive, so system could read from either disk, and you can use two 3.5 if you want setting the bios up to use 2 both A and B and even determine which drive gets to be A with the swap floppy setting in the bios,

 

[terryISO]

Hi.

Just a thought, but have you checked to see if the floppy drive has been mapped as drive "F" under windows? I tried it on a W98 PC here, and I seem to be able to replicate the symptoms that you describe.

It would have taken a bit of trickery to persuade windows to do it. First of all you have to share the floppy drive (e.g. as "drive-a&quot, then you have to map to it using your computers own network name or IP address, etc (e.g. "\\mycomputer\drive-a" or "\\123.123.123.123\drive-a" etc).

When I unmapped it, all was functioning as normal.

 

[CHAMP1]

You might be both be right. It might be a LS120. Maybe WIN didn't recognize it as such so it got mapped as Removable F. I can't see any other reason for the BIOS not letting me change it from floppy drive "none" to "3.5 B" other than that it just couldn't read the drive as a normal 3.5. I used the floppy drive as F: last night running it from Windows and Windows read the disk in it. I would try to do the re-mapping but the computer is not hooked up to the internet. Can I got into WIN Registry to change it?

 

[terryISO]

Hi again.

You don't need a connection to the internet. You should use Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer). Just right click on the start button and select "explore", then got to the Tools menu and select "Unmap (or disconnect) Network Drive". If it's mapped, you'll see it listed there.

 

[CHAMP1]

Thank you so much. I'll try that in Win. Explorer and see if it's mapped.