First post, by BaronSFel001
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- Newbie
Tried searching first but I could not find an exact match to my set of symptoms. First, the hard drive and CD-ROM drive are fine so let those be set aside. The problems come with getting the remaining media working together: 3.5" floppy drive, 5.25" floppy drive, and Zip 100 drive.
This is what I know for certain: the 3.5" drive and motherboard (mine is the AOpen AX6BC) floppy controller are good because using a single-connector floppy cable I can read and write floppies with no issue in both DOS and Windows. I also have to rule out wrong connection in my standard A:/B: 5-point floppy cable because I have tried all combinations and can tell when it is improper by the fact that the floppy drive lights stay continuously on. Finally, the fact that both A: and B: floppy drives are configurable in BIOS has to rule out any possibility that the motherboard does not support and A: and B: drive at the same time (I know support for that started dropping from motherboards but it had to have been years after 1997 which is the time mine comes from).
Here is my primary focus: no matter what connector/BIOS combination I implement, any attempt to get either floppy drive working only results in "Floppy drive(s) fail (40)" during the POST right after the IDE check, and the drives themselves do not make the distinctive "powering-on" sound that I would otherwise get from the 3.5" using the other cable. Could the cable itself be bad somehow, or is there a wild card to this equation?
That wild card may be the ZIP drive as it has behaved strangely ever since I installed it. While I consider difficulties with it a separate matter for now it is possible they may be related. Whenever I connect the ZIP to the IDE (I use it as Primary Slave) the BIOS has no trouble picking it up and identifying it as "IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI Floppy", but Windows 98 is inconsistent in both detecting its presence and identifying what it is; sometimes it will appear as either 3.5" Floppy or Removable Media but it ends up being assigned to drive A: or B: even if I have both floppy drives connected on the cable (having all three drives connected assigns the ZIP to A:, the 3.5" to D:, and does not pick up the 5.25" at all).
While I could not find a match to this problem in other threads I did find some indication that ZIP drives can be hostile in a setup trying to include floppy drives assigned to both A: and B:. I can handle the matters separately if they are reconcilable, but I am at my wit's end with getting the floppy drives by themselves working together and I hope it is as simple as replacing a faulty cable. Before investing in components any further I just wanted to ask for critique on this.
System 20: PIII 600, LAPC-I, AWE64, S220, Voodoo3, SQ2500, R200, 3.1-Me
System 21: G2030 3.0, X-fi Fatal1ty, GTX 560, XP-Vista
Retro gaming (among other subjects): https://baronsfel001.wixsite.com/my-site