PC sees floppy drives but can't read or write to them. 3

[rednitas]

Hello,

I am having trouble reading and writing to floppies.

My PC came with one 3.5" floppy drive. The motherboard supports only one floppy drive. This was verified by reading the documentation on the motherboard from the manufacturer's web site.

I wanted to add an old 5.25" floppy drive to the PC. So, I put an old I/O controller card (MIO-400 KF) in the empty ISA slot and the 5.25" floppy drive in an empty bay. I disabled all functions on the controller card except for the floppy function (i.e., all serial port, parallel port, game port, IDE, etc., functionality was disabled). I connected the 3.5" floppy drive on the first connector on the floppy cable and the 5.25" floppy drive on the second connector, and the tail end to the ISA controller card. In the BIOS on the motherboard I disabled the motherboard floppy controller.

When the PC is rebooted, Windows finds the new controller and the two floppy drives and configures them without any problems. "My Computer" shows both drives. Device Manager shows the floppy controller and the drives to be working properly.

Here is the problem:
Neither drive will read from or write to any floppies. If I double-click on either drive, I get the error, "Please insert disk in Drive A" (or Drive B, if that is the one I double-click on), even though there is a diskette in each drive. For both Drive A and Drive B, when I attempt to read or write to them, the drive light comes on and I can hear the drive spinning. However, ultimately I get the error message described above. If I try to read or write using the MS-DOS command prompt window, I get the error message, "Device is busy."

I have tried the following with no success so far:
- used many different floppies with no change in behavior
- replaced the floppy cable with no change in behavior
- replaced the I/O controller with another one (from SIIG) with no change in behavior
- uninstall Service Pack 2 with no change in behavior
- installed the latest BIOS that was available for the motherboard with no change in behavior

Is this a problem with Windows XP or the motherboard BIOS? The driver for the floppy controller is called fdc.sys and is from Microsoft. The driver for each floppy drive is called flpydisk.sys and is also from Microsoft.

The PC has been rebooted multiple times with no success. I even uninstalled the ISA controller using Device Manager and reinstalled using "Add Hardware Wizard" with no success.

Here is some info. about the PC:

- motherboard is Intel SE440BX-2 (4 PCI slots, 1 PCI/ISA slot, 1 ISA slot)
- CPU is Pentium III 550 MHz
- operating system is Windows XP Professional (it had SP2 earlier, but I uninstalled it)

 

[edfair]

Did you disable the onboard FDC?

Drive A: on the end, Drive B: past the cut and twist and in the middle of the cable?

Both drive select lights at the same time?

And could the M/B specification for a single drive be because the manufacturer was too cheap to supply a cable with both connections?

What kind of cable was supplied for the single drive? Possibly the drive selection choices were forced with a modification to normal connections.

It might help if you gave a link to the M/B documentation.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[rednitas]

The choices for the onboard FDC in the BIOS are:
- enabled (default)
- disabled
- auto

First, I tried the disabled setting. With this setting, when you install the add-in ISA FDC using the "Add Hardware Wizard" in Windows, the FDC installs with an exclamation mark (!). Clicking on Properties in Device Manager shows the following: "Device failed to start (code 10)".

If I set the BIOS setting to "auto", installation of the add-in FDC in Windows goes smoothly. So, currently the setting is "auto".

Yes, the cable is connected properly. The 3.5" drive is "A" and the 5.25" drive is "B".

If I double-click on "A", only "A" lights up and there is disk activity on A (with the eventual message "Please insert disk in Drive A" even though the floppy is already inside; ejecting the floppy and reinserting it makes no difference). If I click on "B", only "B" lights up and there is disk activity on B (with the eventual message "Please insert disk in Drive B").

The cable is my own. I happen to have two sets of the cable and I have tried both. I also happen to have two sets of ISA FDC controllers and I have tried both. The original cable in the PC supported only one device.

Here is the link to the mobo (it is Intel SE440BX-2)...

Top level page on motherboardboard:

http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/se440bx2/

 

[edfair]

Onboard should be disabled. Keeps the O/B from interfering.

Sounds like the add-in is not reading your floppy. Is it a HD controller, or strictly a LD, or is there a jumper setting where you can change the density?

Before you get to the drive read failure the OS should recognize the FDC and load it up. And the error message indicates a problem there.
There is also a possibility that the controller chip itself may no longer be supported. There were several that worked fine in DOS but may not be fully supported without something loaded to drive them.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[rednitas]

When I set the on-board to "disabled", Windows XP has a problem adding the ISA FDC. It adds it with the following problem: "Device could not start (code 10)."

The ISA FDC is an I/O card that has other features like IDE controller, parallel port, serial port, etc. However, all features other than the FDC have been disabled on this board using jumpers. The board is a MIO-400 KF. I found the manual for it at

http://www.driverguide.com;

however, I could not find any driver for it. What do you mean by change the density?

I also have another board that I tried with the same results. That board is a SIIG I/O card, model # CN2424. I had the manual for this board but could not find the driver for it either.

 

[edfair]

Shouldn't need drivers for either if they are built using standard ports, chips, and IRQs.

At the end of the PC timeframe, mid XT, the hard drive specs were changed from double density to high density and the add on controllers of the day had jumpers that set the drive type.

Beginning to sound like there is a more fundamental problem with the M/B. You might want to go to a DOS bootdisk and see if the BIOS can boot it. If it won't go at the DOS level you can pretty well draw the conclusion that the M/B has problems beyond the FDC.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[micker377]

Did the original single floppy work? If so, try this drive alone on the add-in card with the old cable. Do the new floppy cables have a "twist" in them? On the old floppy (single set up), there was no way to set the IRQ. The new drives had an "A" and a "B" jumper and used the "twisted" cable. You may need a "new" type 3.5 "A" drive. I actually came across a couple of "Super Drives". These drives have the 3.5 and 5 1/4 drives built into a 5 1/4 drive bay. Hard to set up (one cable - many jumpers), but works great, one in a 98 machine and the other in my XP Pro SP2 machine.

 

[rednitas]

edfair:

I believe the add-in controller can handle the high density diskettes. I used to have it in a Win95 machine and it worked fine with HD diskettes.

If I put a MS-DOS boot floppy in the A drive (3.5") and try to boot, the PC tries to boot from the diskette (light on and drive spinning) but fails reporting "I/O error, please remove disk".

micker377:

Yes, the original floppy configuration works (i.e., single floppy drive (3.5") connected to motherboard FDC).

I tried just the 3.5" connected to the add-on FDC, but had the same original problems.

The cable I am using does have a twist after the first connector. The original floppy cable had no twist and had a connector for only one floppy.

There are no jumpers that I can see on either floppy drive.

 

[bcastner]

Some things that may help:

. Try using only the motherboard controller to control the two floppy drives. With a suitable cable, the onboard controller should handle both drives in the daisy-chain, no matter how described in the documentation.

. If you can select Buss Mastering for the slot of the secondary FD controller, do so. This should be, if available, a BIOS setting. There may also be a setting to allow the intialization of secondary ROM support from adapter boards. If your native BIOS does not make a provision for secondary addresses for floppy devices, you may need whatever onboard ROM support on the adapter to be initialized.

. The floppy drives should have a jumper setting to determine how they are selected on the cable. For a single floppy setting it may be now set for the equivalent of cable select.

. The floppy drives should have a jumper to determine how the changeline pin is supported. This is completely BIOS and FDC determined. It may be that the onboard FD controller views changeline support in a different way than the add-in FD controller.

I would try in order:

. getting both drives to work with the onboard adapter
. if no luck, get each drive as a single drive implementation, to work with the add-in FD controller. When that is sorted, do the daisy-chain.

 

[edfair]

If the original M/B floppy cable had no cut/twist it indicates that the board was modified to reverse the drive select signals. Or possibly that the drive itself was purchased with drive select 0 built-in.

Other than suspecting that the drives are mis-identified, and trying to read the wrong type I have no suggestions. Hands on, I would try some stuff, but visualizing it is difficult. You might want to try one at a time and changing the CMOS selection to see if it helps.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[rednitas]

Thanks to all of you for your invaluable suggestions. I will try all the experiments mentioned and report back the results.

 

[migrained]

I really think that the Floppy drive is broken... mine has the same issues like yours and I ended up buying a new one.


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