You can always install a network card and transfer files that way. It'll be faster than using floppies or CDs

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-01, 00:04:

You can always install a network card and transfer files that way. It'll be faster than using floppies or CDs

Never occurred to me that that would be possible, will keep it in mind.

However, I have made some progress. Thanks to this blog post (https://erickenny.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/re … ckard-bell-486/) I looked at my board and found the same F151A multiplexer in pretty much the same place. After testing continuity around here I found there actually was some actual damage from the battery leaking. I repaired what I could find, and now floppy drives are sort of working. I can change to A:, which I couldn't do before, and I can list the directory. However trying to load any file from the disk, or trying to format it, fails.

EDIT: Scratch that? I tried to format a couple different floppies and they worked. I thought the floppy I tried was good (I'd just formatted it a couple days ago on my Windows 10 machine using a USB floppy drive) but I guess not. Shouldn't be surprised given the age of these.

So if anyone else encounters the same issue, take a look at that multiplexer chip!