question on floppy disk

A

Airman Thunderbird

Try flipping the ribbon cable. It'll fit both ways, but only works one
way. Also make sure it's enabled in BIOS.
 
C

ChrisR

WIN2K Pro
SP4

Im a SQL DBA, not a hardware guy, so please forgive my lame hardware
question. I pieced together a computer yesterday and the one thing that
doesnt work is the floppy disk. In device manager both the controller and
the floppy drive itself say they are working properly and have good drivers.
However, its totally unusable. Its possible that its bad, but as near as I
can remember it was working in the box it came out of. If I go in DOS and
try to go to "a:" it says the device is not ready. Now a floppy drive is
something I can probably live without, but it would be nice to get this
figured out as well.

TIA, ChrisR
 
R

robm

if you have a floppy cable with TWO connectors try connecting to the end
connector for floppy A: device
 
W

William Asher

ChrisR said:
WIN2K Pro
SP4

Im a SQL DBA, not a hardware guy, so please forgive my lame hardware
question. I pieced together a computer yesterday and the one thing
that doesnt work is the floppy disk. In device manager both the
controller and the floppy drive itself say they are working properly
and have good drivers. However, its totally unusable. Its possible
that its bad, but as near as I can remember it was working in the box
it came out of. If I go in DOS and try to go to "a:" it says the
device is not ready. Now a floppy drive is something I can probably
live without, but it would be nice to get this figured out as well.

TIA, ChrisR

By DOS you mean a CMD window right and this is a 3.5" drive right? Are you
sure the diskette in the drive is good? If you start a CMD window and
instead of mounting the diskette directly (by typing a: or b:) type "CHKDSK
a:" with a diskette in the drive, does it come back and tell you the device
is not ready or does it tell you there are problems with the diskette?
(You could also try "CHKDSK b:".) If there are errors on the diskette, try
reformatting it (assuming there are no data there you want to save) and see
if that helps.

If it's a 5 1/4" drive, remember to latch the drive closed. The bigger
drives get used so infrequently nowadays it is easy to forget (in my
opinion anyway) that simple step.
 
P

Pat Martini

Try flipping the ribbon cable. It'll fit both ways, but only works one
way. Also make sure it's enabled in BIOS.

Hello Chris. Check that the floppy cable has the red stripe on the side farthest from the voltage connector - the exact opposite of your hard disk.
 

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