I thought it was OK to cut off the excess of a floppy cable??

[Sugadaddy]

I decided to make room in my case, so I rounded my IDE and floppy cable, and cut off the part of the floppy cable after the connector for the first drive. I thought I read it was OK to do this, but now it doesn't work.

I played with the settings in the bios, thinking it might be drive B: now, but nothing works. (it either gets recognized as a 5 1/4 floppy or when it is recognized right, if I click on it in explorer, it'll stall my system a couple of times (sound stops, no response from keyboard), and then nothing happens.

Anyone have an idea what's going on with this evil floppy?

 

[Jaraxal]

I'm not sure about the solution to your problem, but you can find single connector floppy cables...

I don't know why motherboards always come with the awful contraption of a cable for floppies ...

 

[Subversal]

This happened to me before... but I just bought another floppy. It read as 5 1/4 , B:, etc. But I never messed with the cable, BIOS settings were correct. Even after using a known working cable, it still was giving me the same problems.

 

[cavingjan]

Floppy cables transpose some wires from the first connector to the second connector. The better choice for rounding floppy cables is to remove the middle connectors and round the whole length. Unless you want to remove the end connector and move it down further.

 

[Sugadaddy]

I don't think it's the drive, since it was working fine until I played around with the cable... Oh well, I'll try to find single connector floppy cable.

 

[Slapstick]

On floppy cables the drive connected to the middle connector is B:, (usually a 5 ¼ drive) and the drive after the twist, (the end connector) is A: You shouldn?t cut a floppy cable but as Jaraxal pointed out you can get single connector floppy cables. I think you may have confused the fact that you can cut IDE cables after the mid connector to make them shorter but not floppy cables

 

[Sugadaddy]

Aahh, that's why it appears as a 5 1/4 in drive. Thanks, I'll know for next time...

 

[DaddyG]

Its possible that you didn't make a clean cut and have some wires shorting, check it out. Floppy connectors have no knowledge of the floppy type, the second is not for a 5 1/4. If your cable is cut correctly, and you do the A-B swap dance in the BIOS you should be OK.

 

[eyor]

If you cut the part with the twist in it off, you will probably need a new cable. Check out outpost for a $4-5 cable shipped overnight free. Or you can look around for a single-connector floppy cable.