Is the light of the floppy drive always on?

Nexxen wrote on 2023-11-08, 09:39:

Is the light of the floppy drive always on?

No, the cable is connected properly (red stripe to pin 1) but if I flip the cable around then yes.

Even with Windows 7 64-bit, the floppy drive did not work well for me thirteen years ago on GA-MA770T-UD3 and a Phenom II 1100T, I also had the wonderful idea of ​​buying 16Gb of RAM and the logical thing was a 64-bit operating system but the problem was precisely the 64-bit operating system. Since then, if I want to use a floppy drive I always use 32-bit Windows, I never tried 32-bit Windows 10, I limit it to 32-bit Windows 7.
So if you're out of ideas, maybe you could try a 32-bit OS to rule out if that's the problem.
Windows 7 32-bit should work perfectly on that hardware, I have already seen that you have 32GB of ram, but to rule it out. and it is not necessary to install the motherboard drivers or anything else, just install the operating system and test the floppy drive after the first start.

My USB floppy drive works on Windows 10 64-bit, so floppy drives in general should be supported. Does the BIOS have a seek floppy drive on boot option and if so, is it enabled? You should hear some noises from the drive if it is during POST. Can you try booting from a floppy? That would rule out a general issue with the drive.

Hoping wrote on 2023-11-08, 10:57:

Even with Windows 7 64-bit, the floppy drive did not work well for me thirteen years ago on GA-MA770T-UD3 and a Phenom II 1100T, I also had the wonderful idea of ​​buying 16Gb of RAM and the logical thing was a 64-bit operating system but the problem was precisely the 64-bit operating system. Since then, if I want to use a floppy drive I always use 32-bit Windows, I never tried 32-bit Windows 10, I limit it to 32-bit Windows 7.
So if you're out of ideas, maybe you could try a 32-bit OS to rule out if that's the problem.
Windows 7 32-bit should work perfectly on that hardware, I have already seen that you have 32GB of ram, but to rule it out. and it is not necessary to install the motherboard drivers or anything else, just install the operating system and test the floppy drive after the first start.

I don't think the OS itself is the problem as I have an Asus P5KPL-AM, Core 2 Quad Q9550 system (which where I took the floppy drive and cable from) that has a 5¼" floppy drive and had a 3½ floppy drive connected (which was using an internal usb adapter since the motherboard supports only one floppy drive). Both drives worked just fine on Windows 10 Professional x64, I could read and write disks with no problem so far.

Also the floppy drive itself doesn't even show up in the BIOS as a bootable device and it's not even mentioned in the POST screen. I don't think that changing to an 32 bit OS would work.

technokater wrote on 2023-11-08, 11:05:

My USB floppy drive works on Windows 10 64-bit, so floppy drives in general should be supported. Does the BIOS have a seek floppy drive on boot option and if so, is it enabled? You should hear some noises from the drive if it is during POST. Can you try booting from a floppy? That would rule out a general issue with the drive.

If I plug the same drive with the internal usb converter that I mentioned in my previous post then yes it works just fine. I haven't checked if the BIOS has that option, but the drive itself won't appear in the boot devices selection screen. Also it doesn't seek and in the POST screen it does not mention the floppy drive at all. Inserting a diskette in it doesn't change anything because it doesn't seek in the first place.

On my ASUS M5A99x EVO I had to downgrade the BIOS because the implementation of UEFI at that time was quite defective on several motherboards I worked with, although that is not the problem, it may be that if only UEFI boot is used or that it is simply activated UEFI boot, the floppy drive may not work correctly.
The obviously basic thing is that the BIOS can boot from the floppy drive and for that the legacy BIOS support will surely need to work correctly.
These are ideas, since it seems strange to me that if you have a floppy disk in the drive it does not appear as a boot option in the BIOS boot menu, in Asrock it is the F11 key for the BIOS boot menu I think.
In fact, without another boot medium, that is, without anything plugged in other than the floppy drive, the motherboard should try to boot from the floppy drive and the light should turn on and you should hear the floppy drive seek sound.

Well, this might sound embarassing and stupid (which it is) but I managed to get the floppy drive working.

The solution? I found out that in the Super-IO Configuration screen there was the on-board floppy controller set to disabled... *facepalm*
I thought setting the type of floppy drive in Floppy Configuration would enable it straight away, I didn't know there was another setting to enable it.

Was really that hard for AsRock to put that in the Floppy Configuration screen instead of Super-IO? We will never know.

Thanks everyone for your inputs... and sorry for wasting everyone's time. Haha.

Glad you got it working! On most boards I've seen the floppy type and floppy controller config were in separate menus, so I'd say that's not on Asrock. Don't worry, be happy that it was such a simple fix and nothing hardware-related.