how to install a floppy drive?

We have an XPHome computer here "“ one of those fairly new ones that no longer come with floppy drives. Since we need floppy drives for the work we do, I figured I’d just put a floppy into it since the mobo has a floppy slot. I thought it was going to be simple. WRONG.

After purchasing an internal floppy, I removed the floppy bay punch-blank, installed the floppy, cabled it to the motherboard and to power. BTW, there is no way to plug the cable or the power in wrong, because of notches on the plugs. Then I went into the bios and enabled a 1.44 floppy drive. When I boot, I get an FDC error which I can bypass by hitting F1, but the A: drive is still not showing in "My computer.â€

The device does not light up, so I took it back to the retailer and asked them to test it. When they tested it, it lit up fine. I went into device manager and there are no generic floppy disk devices listed. I tried to install it under "add new hardware," but I don’t get a choice of "floppy disk drive," and windows hasn’t found anything when I let it search for new devices.

It seems that I need basic generic device drivers, but I don't know how to jumpstart Windows to install them.

Any ideas?? Don’t know where to go from here. Thanks, anybody.

- maureen

 

I have had the same problem as this twice before. I even purchased an additional floppy drive last time as I thought mine was broken.

Both times it was a problem with cheap or faulty PSUs.

I use Antecs and Tagans now = no problem.

It might be worth trying a different PSU in the pc to see if it is that.

 

Silver, I suspected some dead leads too even though this is a farily new machine, so I even purchased an extension to plug the floppy into into several different unused power leads. Right now, the drive is powered with a split off the plug that is powering the hard drive, so I know it's good, cause the hard drive is working fine. I don't know how to use electrical meters, so I can't test it that way. But it looks doubtful that it's the psu.

Pete, You got it -- that's why I went into device mgr. I wanted to remove, reboot and let Windows reinstall too. Generic floppy controller is not listed anywhere in device manager. That's my problem: how to install those floppy controllers/drivers in Windows. The bios knows it's there.

Next time I get into the machine, I'll try switching the ribbon around at the mobo, and then again at the drive. However, I'll have to resurrect an old ribbon without any plug notches. The device has a notched receptor for the ribbon plug, so does the mobo. I don't want to hurt anything by screwing up the cable orientation. Guess this machine will be coming home with me this weekend.

Was hoping someone would know whether I just needed to try a repair or what....

- maureen (cringing at losing my weekend)

 

maureen

May be the cable is swapped end for end. The twisted pair should be closest to the drive. Usually if the plug is just upside down, the floppy light is on all the time.

Also: Do you have tweakUIXP installed? I can turn off drives in the My computer>drives and it will not show in windows explorer.

 

From the sound of it, my guess is the FDC error is an error message from the bios. If so no amount of tinkering in Windows will fix it. Double check the cable as Bmoore mentioned.

 

Check through the motherboard manual. I see several settings for floppy drives. In mine (yours may be different), under Integrated Periferals there is "On Board FDC ", settings are Auto, Disabled and Enabled. Whoever set up you system may have disabled the controller.

If you want to test that it set properly in the BIOS, try setting the Floppy as the first boot drive and starting with a startup/boot floppy.

Matt

 

I think you've got it Matt. I turned mine to disabled and the boot gave me a double beep and "FDC Failure ". Had to press F1 to continue.

 

Mattman, you got it. I didn't know there were two places in the bios to enable a floppy. But it didn't end there --

I found and enabled "onboard FDC" in the bios, then saved, booted up, and the drive now lit up on post.

The A: drive was listed in My Computer, but it would not read a floppy. I tried several floppies; the error message = insert disk, or disk is not formatted. I substituted an old, good floppy drive, and it still would not read.

Device manager was showing two devices: a standard floppy disk controller and a floppy disk drive. I removed those and rebooted. Now it read several diskettes just fine, even though device manager still showed two items.

When I changed out the old drive for the new one, it failed again. So, after a trip back to the store for an exchange, we're now back in business and looking good. And I have my weekend back!

Thanks, mattman. good job!

maureen

 

Maureen, VERY well done It would have been distressing to see those error messages.

You could see we were all doing our best to ensure you had a nice weekend

Matt