Help!! Cant get floppy to work with new DFI AK74-EC mobo.....

[Dude420]

It freezes after the cpu test.

If i plug the cable in backwards, it will detect
cpu, ram and ide's, but then says "floppy disk fail (40)"
The floppy lights up & makes clicking noise when power is turned on also.


I think the bios is set ok.

The floppy was tested in another (this) computer.
I tried the cable from this puter and got the same response,
so the cable should be ok.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[DaddyG]

When you plug the cable, where is the red stripe? It should be on the left looking at the pins on the back of the floppy. If the cable connector has a plastic lug preventing insertion this way, remove the lug with a sharp knife. You can not flip the cable at the mobo end. If a system has been booted with the cable flipped, (the lite should be on all the time) and a boot disk is in the drive, the boot disk normally gets toasted. You may need a new boot floppy.

 

[Dude420]

If it is plugged in correctly, it locks up after the main processor test.

 

[DaddyG]

Whens its installed 'correctly' is the red stripe on the left, looking at the connector from the back ??. Are you using the last connector on the cable. Is the cable completely flipped, mobo end on the floppy.?? The first drive should be after the cable twist.

 

[Dude420]

Yes. It is plugged in like that. It says where pin 1 is on the floppy so i have that right. The cable is right, too. But, it will lock up almost immediately (Usually after the cpu or ram test) when turned on.

The only way i can get it past this screen is if the floppy is plugged in backwards. It will fail the floppy after detecting the HD and CDrom, then you can press f1 to continue or delete for bios menu.




Here's some info on the rig if it helps....

DFI AK74-EC Mainboard www.dfi.com
AMD T-Bird 750 MHz
2 x 128M PC133 SDRAM
8.4G WD IDE HDD
32x Mitsumi CDRom
Old 2M PCI Video

 

[Dude420]

you were right, i did fry a bunch of floppys.

the floppy drive will work when installed correctly, but the system crashes before it makes it there or right when it does. Sometimes the light goes on continuosly when it crashes. Sometimes you can get to bios and it will crash there.

if it is fast enough, (takes a lot of resets and prayer here) the floppy will load and everything seems fine.
So why is it crashing like this?


I wonder if running that pci video card is screwing it up? The board is made for 4x agp. I have the jumpers on the mobo all default. There is a jumper for the pci bus to be set for pci 2.2 (default) or non-pci 2.2. I don't know what kind of video card this is let alone what spec it runs at. It is from an old P120 which cost $2000 in 1994.

I resoldered some loose pins on the floppy drive power cable. They were getting loose after all these years. I first thought that this connection fried the onboard floppy disk controller, but it works fine.

Another concern is that the western digital HD has that EZ-Bios junk on it. I think it some kind of pre- or post- bios program that allow you system to have large HD partitions. It is partitioned into 4 with none active.

also, while playing around before, an error message saying "cmos checksum error" came up after the floppy fail. It doesn't come up now though.

I don't know what to do with this rig...:disgust:

 

[DaddyG]

The EZBIOS junk is not good when you boot from a floppy. Basically, this type of program is loaded with the master boot record of the drive. Effectively, it steals the entry point to INT13 and provides routines that allow for accessing hard-drives bigger than 8gigs when your BIOS doesn't support them. In order for the floppy to work and be able to access the hard-drive, the floppy must have the same EZ-BIOS 'stuff' on it and load it when it boots.

 

[Dude420]

I'm gonna put the HD back into my other rig and try to wipe it totally clean.

I'm not sure if the ez-bios disk will let me do this, though. It may put the ez-bios info on it anyway.

If it doesn't work, i will try fdisk.
Are there any good programs that can clean a hdd through Win98 and make it ready for a fresh install?

How can i make a win98 setup disk without having to re-install it on my good rig?


But, I don't think erasing the hdd will help any.
The rig will lock even with the ide's disconnected and ide's disabled in bios.
Is the bios overwritten or appended by ez-bios?
What you are saying is that my rig should run fine without the hdd, but it doesn't.

 

[Dude420]

still no luck...

I emailed DFI support yesterday, but haven't gotten a reply yet.

If I cant get it working by Monday, I am gonna try to return it or sell it.

This mobo is $hit!!

 

[DaddyG]

AFAIK EZBIOS doesn't touch your actual BIOS. It 'steals' the entry pount address for the INT13 routine and replaces it with the address of the EZBIOS code which is loaded from the master boot record on your hard-disk. Your correct in thinking that if your hdd are disconnected, and disabled in your BIOS that your problem is not related to EZBIOS.

 

[DaddyG]

AFAIK EZBIOS doesn't touch your actual BIOS. It 'steals' the entry point address for the INT13 routine and replaces it with the address of the EZBIOS code which is loaded from the master boot record on your hard-disk. Your correct in thinking that if your hdd are disconnected, and disabled in your BIOS that your problem is not related to EZBIOS.

 

[Dude420]

Yeah, I don't know.
There has definitely got to be something wrong with board itself.

I tried hotswapping the floppy data cable connection to fry the controller, just to have a definite reason to return it.
The floppy controller didn't work for about a day, and then fixed itself.
Gotta love 'puters!!

Some customer at Best Buy was telling me a board he had couldn't have one of the plastic standoffs on the board or it wouldn't work.
I doubt this is the problem, but I will check when I pull the board from the case. The guy looked kinda shady anyway.

I got the board at a computer show. Thank God the company will take it back. I was just wondering if I could trade up for a better board.
Maybe you can recommend one?

I need 4x AGP, ATA100, Socket A, ATX.
Preferably with built-in sound, IDE, Floppy.
Want to build a rig specifically for Video compression with an ATI AIW Radeon 32MB.

Thanks, Dude420.