Floppy drive not working - new motherboard

[Newposter]

Bought a new barebones system at a computer show Sunday. It included CPU, mobo, case and 300W power supply, 512 Mb DDR and a CD-RW drive.

I transferred my HD and video card to the new chassis, and also a new Sony floppy drive that I bought from another vendor.

The BIOS recognizes the drive, it appears in Device Hardware Manager as working normally, and A: shows in Windows Explorer. However, it cannot read any media, asks me to Insert a Floppy in Drive A: after I have already done so with a good disk with good data.

I swapped it with my older, known good floppy and data cable, same result.

Now I'm thinking the motherboard is bad, FDC no good. Any ideas for troubleshooting before I bring it back to the vendor? This is a last resort, as it's my active web server, has no other problems yet.

Mobo is an AMD Socket 7, ECS brand, K7VTA3 with 1.8 GHz Athlon processor, running Win 2K Pro SP3. Any known issues or other steps I can take before returning? Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[mudskipper]

You sound like you know what you are doing, but we'll run through some basics just in case you accidentally missed something ;-)

First off, it is always a good idea to boot to a floppy when testing a floppy drive issue. This will ensure that your OS is not the issue (especially if you did not reformat or at least remove old drivers). Definitely try this!!!! If you can boot to a floppy, then I would look at re-installing your Motherboard/chipset drivers. If you can not boot to a floppy, then you can start looking at hardware issues!!

If your floppy light is on constantly, then the cable is backwards.

Make sure that your floppy drive is hooked up AFTER the twist in the cable. Ensure that pin 1 is correct.

It doesn't sound like you put in any PCI Par. Port cards in, but if you did, try taking them out. Some of them are known to cause issues with the floppy drive (updated drivers will fix this).

Anybody else out there see something that I missed?? Mudskipper
___________________________________________________________________________________

Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[Newposter]

Will set it to boot to floppy and try it with a system disk tonight. I made sure both power and data cables were oriented properly at all times. The access LED does come on when I tag the A: drive in Explorer, and it says:" Please insert a disk in drive A:". It then makes that searching, grinding sound every few seconds, as if it were an unformatted disk, but it is a known good disk that works in several machines. Cable is connected to driver after the twist.

I only installed the HD and the AGP video card (ATI Rage Pro Fury), everything else was onboard. Didn't touch the drivers on anything else. I did search for new floppy drivers, but it said all was current and working properly.

Will also check all board jumpers and BIOS settings more thoroughly. Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[edfair]

Sounds like data read has gone bad on the M/B FDC. You might try an IDE I/O card if you have one available. That is the fastest fix available. And personally, I think it is the best fix, since I don't like integrated stuff anyway. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.