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Floppy Disk Fail 40 - works only with one model

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First post, by Vaylo

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Hi,

so today i bought a new FDD so that i could finally throw away the old rusty (literally) drive that was with the 486 since like 1996. The old model is Mitsumi D359T3, new one is D359M3. As mentioned in the subject PC refuses to boot with the new drive and refuses to boot without any floppy drives connected. I understand the latter - that's a matter of setting up boot preferences in BIOS. But what's the deal with the new drive?

I noticed there are two difference between the two drives
- old one has all the pins on the IDE connector, new one is missing one pin but it's not like it's broken it has never been there
- old one has some jumpers that you can move around, new drive doesn't appear to have any jumpers

So what makes the old one so special (except for 30 year long bond with the rest of the machine) that the PC won't boot with out it?

BTW mobo is Zida 4DPS v2.1, AMD DX4-100.

Thanks for your advices in advance.

Reply 3 of 5, by Horun

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All new 1.44Mb drives are perma locked at ID1 so must go to end of a twisted cable of most motherboards (exception: some compaq and hp use a single straight connector cable) and BIOS needs first floppy as A drive.
Another option in some bios is "swap floppy", which makes the twisted end floppy "B" and the straight connector "A"....
we are assuming your old drive is set at ID1.....

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 5, by Vaylo

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I tried all the combinations with connectors and bios settings but with no luck. There was one more discovery though...when the drive is accessed in DOS it makes an attempt to read the diskette but it ends up with an error saying the diskette is unreadable (i know there's no problem with the diskette as the other drive has no problem reading it). Wouldn't that suggest that the drive is actually faulty?

Reply 5 of 5, by Horun

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Yes that does sound like the drive may be faulty.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

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