5.25" floppy drive keeps failing \ VOGONS

5.25" floppy drive keeps failing

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First post, by dada

Posted on 2011-06-09, 22:57

dada Offline

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Hi there. I'm nearly done getting my retro gaming rig working, only thing left to resolve is the 5.25" floppy drive. I've got it set up at B:, with a regular 3.5" as the A:. After fiddling around with the cable a bit I managed to get the A: drive working, but the B: refuses to read any floppy I put in, despite it actually activating and appearing to properly read the disc.

Formatting the floppies also doesn't seem to work:

So what could this be indicative of? I'm pretty sure it's connected properly (the connector has a ridge to prevent incorrect insertion). I bought this floppy drive off of ebay ages ago so I'm not sure if it actually works, to be honest, but hopefully this is some common problem that I can easily deal with.

EDIT: I just reversed the drive letters. So now the 3.5" is B: and the 5.25" is A:. Same result: the 3.5" works, the 5.25" doesn't even though I tried a ton of floppies and I'm pretty sure at least some of them should work.

Reply 1 of 12, by Tetrium

Posted on 2011-06-09, 23:27

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Maybe it's read/write heads are dirty?

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Reply 2 of 12, by sklawz

Posted on 2011-06-10, 00:59

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to get two floppies working in a configuration
as your A=3.5" B=5.25" i had to change a jumper
on the 5.25" drive to switch from drive select
to motor control or something like that.

if the motor doesn't turn on the 5.25" drive
yet the light comes on then inspect the
hardware manual for your device to see if
it has such as an option.

btw, you can always test your 5.25" to see if
it actually works by removing the 3.5" drive
from the equation and sticking the 5.25" on
the terminating floppy connector (i think it's
that way around).

bye

PS. i can check my 486 setup with two drives
tomorrow and if by any chance you have
a matsushita FMD01730B4 i may be able
to work out the exact jumper.

Reply 3 of 12, by TheMAN

Posted on 2011-06-10, 01:09

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make sure the cable has a twist in it... otherwise dual floppy drives won't work

Reply 4 of 12, by Markk

Posted on 2011-06-10, 07:59

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The drive is a 1.2mb or 360kb one?

Reply 5 of 12, by ratfink

Posted on 2011-06-10, 09:21

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Based on my experiences here's a kind of checklist:

- check bios settings
- check cable orientation
- check no little ribbon cables or other wiring on the floppy drive have got detached
- check the floppy density/whatever corresponds to the drive

Reply 6 of 12, by dada

Posted on 2011-06-10, 09:51

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Thanks all, I'll give these things a try. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get it working with just the 5.25" drive on the far end of the cable so I think the drive itself may be bad. Will check out if I can change any jumpers too.

Reply 7 of 12, by Robin4

Posted on 2011-06-10, 12:03

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Markk wrote:
The drive is a 1.2mb or 360kb one?

I think its an 360K, because its formatting 360kb with standard command.
An 1.2MB drive would format 1.2MB with standard command.

Reply 8 of 12, by dada

Posted on 2011-06-10, 14:55

dada Offline

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Robin4 wrote:
Markk wrote:
The drive is a 1.2mb or 360kb one?

I think its an 360K, because its formatting 360kb with standard command.
An 1.2MB drive would format 1.2MB with standard command.

Yeah, but it gets that information from the BIOS. A drive can be erroneously configured that way, I think. It's a 360KB drive, anyhow.

Reply 9 of 12, by Markk

Posted on 2011-06-10, 15:12

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It might be obvious, but are you sure that the disk you're trying to access/format is a 360kb and not a 1.2mb one?

Reply 10 of 12, by dada

Posted on 2011-06-10, 21:22

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Alright guys, sorry for wasting your time but it turns out I was being an idiot. 😀

Markk wrote:
It might be obvious, but are you sure that the disk you're trying to access/format is a 360kb and not a 1.2mb one?

I double checked the model and found out it was actually a 1.2MB floppy drive. Which is interesting because I bought it second hand thinking it was actually a 360KB drive.

Changed the BIOS settings and immediately it worked like a charm.

Reply 11 of 12, by Robin4

Posted on 2011-06-10, 23:41

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hehe 🤣..

What brand and type are you using?

Reply 12 of 12, by dada

Posted on 2011-06-11, 00:57

dada Offline

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Robin4 wrote:
hehe 🤣..

What brand and type are you using?

TEAC FD-55GFR.

https://druid69.yourwebhosting.com/catalog/im … es/FD55GFR1.JPG

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