Bad Floppy Controller?

[L8CS]

I just upgraded a K7-700 system to a XP1700 with a Abit KT7A mb, rev. 1.3. Everything else in the system was already working but I couldn't access the floppy when I fired it back up. The light came on when acessing the drive but it wouldn't read the disk. I replaced the drive, swapped power and drive cables and I still have the same problem. I have cleared and reflashed the Bios and removed the disk controller from the Win98 Device Manager, with the same results. I thought the mb floppy controller was bad but Windows finds the controller and reinstalls the driver when I removed it. I'm assuming the plug and pray for the drive controller is coming from the chipset, so I guess it could be a bad solder joint or pinout. I have already gone thru the AT search questions and tried those tricks.

But, I didn't reformat the hd and I forget to remove the old VIA chipset drivers when I swapped the boards, so is it possible that a chipset driver bug could account for the controller problem?

 

[minendo]

Did you try switching the way the drive cable was plugged in?

 

[L8CS]

Yes I have. It's a Sony drive and pin # 1 is marked on the case. Pin # 1 is also marked on the mb. I used the original flat cable that only had one drive connector and now I'm using a single connector round cable.

 

[L8CS]

Well guess what? It wasn't the floppy, the cables or the mb. My Antec KS-282 front cover was apparently causing the floppy to malfunction. I can't figure out why but when you lock the removable 3.5" internal drive bay into the cover, it caused the floppy to give a "bad system disk" error at bootup, even though it searched for the disk and the lights came on normally. After swapping drives, cables, powerleads, I said to heck with it and installed the new mb and components into a new Enlight 7327 case before I discovered the problem was the case.

Over the weekend, I put together another system, using the same Antec case, spare components and a new floppy drive. It was the same problem as before. I swapped out mb and floppies and still the same. I finally removed the old floppy and layed it outside the case and rebooted. The darned thing worked like normal. I repeated it again by remounting it into the removable drive bay and re-installing it into the Antec. The problem repeated itself. The only thing I can come up with is that the drive bay must have put a bind on the floppy when I locked it into place.