First post, by Digitoxin
I have a Core 2 Duo machine that I use for running legacy software and backing up my floppy disk collection. it was one of the last platforms to support floppy drives, but it only supports a single drive. I currently have a 5 1/4 drive installed in it. I'm using the machine to make backups of my floppy disk game collection. For most of the disks, I use Winimage and call it a day, but I have several old Sierra AGI games with disk based copy protection I would like to remove so I can use the games in DOSBox.
I have a tool to remove the copy protection, but it runs in DOS and requires the original disk (which I have) to work. I have a hard drive formatted with DOS 6.22 installed for this purpose. However, when I boot into DOS, floppy disks are unreadable in the 5 1/4 drive even though the drive works fine in Windows.
Is this a timing issue with the 5 1/4 drive because the machine is too new or is this an issue of bad or insufficient BIOS support for 5 1/4 drives? If I connect a 3 1/2 drive to the machine, it works fine in both DOS and Windows.
If its a platform compatibility issue and I want to put together an older machine, how far back to I need to go to guarantee compatibility with the 5 1/4 drive in DOS?
Edit: just to be clear since some of these keep coming up.
1. My motherboard only supports a single floppy drive at a time. I only have one floppy drive connected. I am not trying to connect more than one floppy drive to the system.
2. The drive is connected to the correct header on the cable.
3. I have tried swapping the cable and am currently using a brand new cable.
4. It is a 1.2M floppy drive and is correctly configured as such in the BIOS
5. I have connected a 3 1/2 floppy drive and that drive works properly in both Windows and DOS. Only the 5 1/4 drive will not read in DOS.
6. When trying to access a 5 1/4 floppy in DOS, it tries to read the disk but immediately comes back with General failure reading drive A.
7. I have tried reading both 360K and 1.2M floppies in DOS. Both give me the same error. These disks read fine in Windows.
8. I am using Windows XP when booting in Windows. I have not tried installing and trying Windows 95 or 98. I figured the platform was too new to bother.
9. I have a feeling the BIOS does not correctly support 5 1/4 floppy drives even though the option exists to choose one in the BIOS. I'm pretty sure Windows XP and later bypass the BIOS and access the floppy controller directly.