Don't recognize floppy drives any more !!!

Hi to all !

I just checked and backed up some data on my PCs and had to change HDDs a lot.

Then suddenly my floppy drive didn't work any more.

I have bought a new one, so now I have

2 drives (one new obviously supposed to work)
2 cables
2 PCs

none of the combinations work

I checked the voltages and they are fine

the cables are connected correctly of course ...

any ideas beside FDD controller fried etc ?

The drives are not even detected by the BIOS so it's not a driver issue ...

Are your floppies enabled in BIOS, i.e. Drive A = 1.44MB?
and none of that Type 3(Japanese) stuff enabled?

You sure you connected the twisted-cable-end to the floppy-drive and have pin 1?red line on cable where it is supposed to be?
Did you check the powercable?
Maybe try another power connector?

Thanks, already tried all that and all is fine !

I managed to read one floppy once now but when i rebooted it wasnt reading it a second time

really weird stuff...

What is your OS?
If W98, go into device manager and remove all floppy stuff. A reboot will re-install it and might solve your problem.

If W2K, in device manage uninstall the floppy disk drive and the standard floppy disk-controller, then reboot or check for new hardware.

I don't know WXP but should be similar to W2K

Must have missed that in all the excitement....

Maybe (re-)flashing your BIOS will do the trick

Don't recognize a floppy drive anymore, eh?

Well, they usually look like this:



And the disks they use usually look like this:





You say you tried all possible combinations? That does sound odd.

While you were shuttling HDD's back and forth, did it start not recognizing the floppy during or right after you were done with what you were doing? What might have happened to the floppy while you were doing this?

Does the light on the front of the drive go on?

I know you said the cables were all plugged in ok, but are you sure the twisted end isn't plugged into the system board?

all cables are plugged ok i said twisted on the fdd, there is a notch so i cant put it the wrong way even if i wanted...

yes, it stopped working after i finished because i didnt reboot before ...

The power cable isn't damaged ? Sometimes by fiddling around, you can pull a bit on the power chords without noticing & doing so can power on/off the drive a bunch of times in a short period of time, causing it to die.

Does the the Floppy from your 2nd PC work on your main one ?

hmm ok
new weird stuff now
some floppy disks can get read and all the ones i had before cannot
i really dont understand a f* !

you need to make sure it isn't a dodgy floppy drive. eliminate it from the equation by testing both or at least one in another pc if you can.

it could be a bad cable between the floppy and mobo, or it could be the mobo. you could eliminate the OS scenario by testing the drive in msdos mode.

i wouldnt recommend flashing it before you fix it, if it was working before you started switching hard drives on it, then it shouldn't require a flash to work now.

i'll put my money on a dodgy cable, or on a damaged motherboard component. i hope for your sake its a ebkac.