Floppy Drive Not Recognised

[DB83]

sorry, but I AM trying to help if you want to listen.
IIRC any drive will produce a short display of light when the power is switched on - my CD/DVD drives do and, again, if memory serves me so did the FDD when I had one in my previous system.
Since you are so insistent that your cable is fine - maybe it is - then why not test that in the other PC with this drive which works using a standard cable. If it does work then I will be glad to withdraw the criticism of the self-made cable and proceed with the next part. But since you do not want me to reply to the thread you will have to hope that someone else will be courteous enough to help you.

[jagabo]

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&stor...uctId=11032427

[DB83]

Or even this one :

http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-1-44MB-External-USB-Floppy-Drive-DC361B-NEW-/370369909177?cmd=V...item563bc451b9

And hey, its 'made' by HP as well. A perfect match.

[Nelson37]

Examining the HP diagram, and a picture of the standard MSI 7525 board, there do appear to be pins missing on the HP diagram which are present in the photo of the standard board.

While it is normal to leave out an unused pin or two, there appear to be four or five that are not present. Can you physically examine the floppy connector on the mobo to determine whether it matches the diagram posted earlier? It would appear that HP went to extra and special effort to remove them. The spec does mention the floppy connector and says nothing at all about it being disabled. Been a long time since I checked the pinout on a floppy cable, I know there are more than one unused pin, but not sure how many. What I mean by this is that the missing pins on the diagram do not necessarily mean that the floppy is in fact disabled. It just makes no sense to go to extra effort to remove an available capability.

Just for shits and giggles, I just disconnected the cable from my floppy drive and re-booted. Need to do this a second time to make sure I did not miss a brief flash, but the light did not appear to come on. Having said that, if I had the PC in my shop, the FIRST THING I would do would be to install a standard floppy power adapter, being as I have at least two in stock. When you can eliminate a major question mark quickly and easily, you do it. At this point, unless you try your homemade adapter in a PC with a working floppy connector, you do NOT KNOW that the adapter is working. Without this backup test, the blind insistence that a component is working without any hard evidence is just wrong. You do not diagnose PC hardware problems based on faith. Step-by-step elimination of possibilities.

[AlanHK]

If you've got an old PC that does have a floppy power connector, you can silence the doubters by putting it next to your new PC, open both cases, connect the floppy to that power and the data cable to the new PC mobo. Or if you have a junk PC part box, pull out an old power supply with a floppy power connector and use that.

Was interested to read this thread as I noticed recently that my floppy wasn't working, wasn't available in the BIOS (though it was before). Been literally years since I needed to use it but I've been meaning to check it out and I've gotten some ideas from this thread, maybe the data cable is backwards from the last time I was upgrading -- never crossed my mind that was possible.

Examining the HP diagram, and a picture of the standard MSI 7525 board, there do appear to be pins missing on the HP diagram which are present in the photo of the standard board.

While it is normal to leave out an unused pin or two, there appear to be four or five that are not present.

I really find it hard to believe that HP would have crippled the floppy connector -- much simpler and cheaper just to omit the whole thing than sabotage it. If there's a floppy connector on the mobo it should work one way or another.

My guess is that instead of the traditional floppy connector which could support two drives (A and B), including the older 5.25" floppy, this was simplified to only support a single 3.5" floppy.

And if so, maybe the cable that matches this has to be "simplified" in some way to match.
And/or there any jumpers on the floppy drive?

They may have omitted all the documentation explaining that once the floppy drive wasn't installed, maybe some research into older models with similar mobos might dig up something.

[aedipuss]

floppy cabling is just strange to begin with. back when the standard was started by ibm in a 2 floppy computer both drives are jumpered to drive 2. the cable has 3 connectors, one to the board, the middle one being straight cabled to the B: drive, and the far end of the cable has several wires twisted in the cable before connecting to the A: drive. in the hp trying the end position and then the middle one would clear up any one drive strategy.

the missing pins in the wiring diagram turn out to be unused in floppy cables anyway. pins 3,4,5,6 can be left out and cause no problem, sorry i mentioned them before. my mistake.

[Nelson37]

Never heard of or seen a floppy connector re-wired to only connect one floppy. Some units required different jumper settings for two drives, but never anything special for one.

The floppy did work in another PC. However, did that other PC have a cable with a twisted section, or not? Is the cable the same as in the working unit? If not, use the working cable from the test PC on the floppy in the current PC. Test the power adapter from the other PC as Alan suggested. The drive could be jumpered for a cable with a twist and the cable being used might not have the twist. Or you might have a bad cable.

From a testing standpoint, any test using the home-made power adapter is invalid until that adapter has been VERIFIED to be working. Groove into the concept of the KNOWN GOOD.

From a hardware standpoint, what we currently have is NO VERIFICATION that the floppy connector is really disabled. It might be, and it might not. We also have NO VERIFICATION that it is functional. It can NOT be considered KNOWN GOOD. Whenever you have two such parts in the same chain, one MUST be eliminated. Round and round we go, yet we keep coming back to that $3.00 part.

[AlanHK]

Was interested to read this thread as I noticed recently that my floppy wasn't working, wasn't available in the BIOS (though it was before). Been literally years since I needed to use it but I've been meaning to check it out and I've gotten some ideas from this thread, maybe the data cable is backwards from the last time I was upgrading -- never crossed my mind that was possible.

I finally cracked the case and checked my floppy connector -- it was on the right way (I was pretty sure about that, following the old "red wire closest to the power connector" rule, but was going to reseat it for luck when I noticed that one of the pins on the drive was bent out of position. I nudged it straight with a screwdriver, reconnected, rebooted and now I have a floppy A: drive -- just like back in the 80s.

So it's always worth rechecking your connections no matter how redundant it seems.

Now I can make a start on copying all my boxes of floppies to hard disk. They should all fit on on one CDR, assuming they're still readable. Then I can chuck them except one or two for emergencies.

[budz]

easier solution just buy a USB floppy drive....just my 2 cents!