ARGH! whats wrong with my 1.44 floppy?!

[klmico]

I'm having a problem with a Teac floppy drive. Everything appears that it is plugged in correctly and my system boots up but the damn thing can't see to detect if a floppy disk is in the drive. The little green light is constantly on and when I insert a floppy disk, it doesn't see and it asks me to insert one. Does anyone know what's wrong?

 

[thirtythree]

If the light is constantly on it probably means the cable is on backwards ...

 

[ScrapSilicon]

yep..what he said ..or locked the..uh..locked up

 

[klmico]

Yeah I've tried flipping the cable. I've done so numorous times but when the light isn't constantly on, the drive seems to not be detected and I get and A drive error during boot up. Could it be something wrong with the cable or the drive?

 

[spanky]

u try flipping the cable around on both the floppy & mobo? and yes, i might be a bad cable.

 

[JW310]

Check to make sure the floppy drive controller isn't disabled in the BIOS. I've run into that problem myself, and it turned out that even though the drive and cable were good, the floppy controller was disabled in the BIOS (and the light even stayed on solid when the cable was flipped, with the controller disabled).

Note: there are 2 places in the BIOS to set up the floppy drive... you've probably got it set to show that the A: drive is a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy in the same spot that the IDE devices are set up. But there's a place (usually in the Integrated Peripherals section of the BIOS) where you can enable/disable the floppy drive controller. Sounds to me like it's disabled at that point in the BIOS. I think if the drive were bad, you wouldn't even be getting the light on the drive to go on with the cable reversed, though I could be wrong.

JW

 

[stevewm]

Just checking, but are you flipping the cable on both ends (mobo and drive?) If so, just try flipping it at the drive, leave it connected to the motherboard as is. Constant light on always means cable is on backwards.

 

[Dan]

Try another cable.

 

[EvanGeliSt]

Man... wanted to say something useful in the thread.. but all's been said.

But same thing as what Deslocke mentioned. Switch the cable the opposite way. Only do that for the side connecting the floppy disc drive. I had that problem the last time and it took me hours b4 i discovered that...

 

[Matt155]

If you have connected the cable correctlly then try these 2 things. First, blow out the drive with compress air in a can, dust buildup can cause that. Second, try unmounting the drive from you case and put a floppy in it and see if it works. Somtimes the floppy drive being mounted with the screws that are too tight causes some problem. I don't like loose screws and sometimes I over do it

 

[Heinrich]

I've killed 4 floppy drives in the past 2 years plugging them in backwards. It seems that the older ones can't handle it. I always just grabbed another from the spare parts rack at work, we have dozens.

But I don't have access to that any more. They are $8 on pricewatch.