does the drive connect via 1 cable or 2 ?

I would presume one cable, but I am not absolutely sure.

Matt

That is what the back of the drive looks like.

EDIT: I guess my next question would have to be this... am I only allowed to use one drive or the other, but not both at the same time?

Matt

I assume this little brown cable should plug somewhere...

Ok... So I basically found the answer to my question in the form of a YouTube video. However I'm a bit confused by the steps and I am wondering if anyone here can make this clearer for laypersons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9YXyfG0Vf0

Also, it appears that both drives cannot run simultaneously, but they can take turns at operating. The only downside to this is no direct floppy copy operations can be performed from one disk to the other at the same time.

Anyway, hope someone can make sense of the CMOS editing.

Matt

This is not different from computers with two drives. A floppy controller can only 'talk' to one drive at a time.

What operating system will you be using it with?

Ah makes sense. Thanks for the clarification h-a-l-9000.

Windows 7 will be the OS I use this with. The only thing I'll be using this drive for is to make disk images from an aging collection of 5.25 inch disks I have before they decay into unreadable plastic.

EDIT: As far as I can tell, it shouldn't matter what OS I use anyway, since this floppy drive business is all handled at the BIOS level.

Matt

[Thread moved to Marvin Section]

Thanks eL_PuSHeR. This should help the thread gain more exposure.

Matt

I have one of these installed in an XP system. It will read or write from either slot depending on which has a disk inserted. I wouldn't try to occupy both. I don't recall having to do anything special with it to make it work.

SKARDAVNELNATE, how is your cabling done for the drive? I just want to know if you plugged it in as an A: or B: drive? I notice only one cardslot port on the back of the drive.

Matt

5.25" floppy ribbon cable, it's plugged into the connector at the end. It shows up as both A: and B: in Windows.

I'm using one of these drives in my 486.

To use this :

1. You need a 5.25" floppy connector to connect this drive to the motherboard.

2. In BIOS, in the basic setting (eg. the first option in Award Bios - where you set the type of hard drives and date and time), set Floppy A to 1.2MB and Floppy B to 1.44MB.

3. You can set the "Seek Floppy Drive on Boot" in BIOS to see if they are connected properly and to see which reads first (- A drive).

4. You can now use the BIOS option "Swap Floppy Drive" if you would like to choose the 3.5" slot as the first, A drive, which automatically changes the 5.25" slot(drive) to B.

Note:-

The floppy connector on the motherboard supports 2 floppy drives.

Malik... I looked at the jumper settings on the Epson SD-800 and it appears that the 3.5 inch floppy is set as Drive A by default. Should I plug in the Drive A cardslot plug, but set Drive A to be the 3.5 inch drive?

Matt

Ok... so I have a new problem and it involves the drive itself. I finally got it to detect in Windows 8 DP (yes... Windows 8 still supports floppies). Unfortunately, whenever I try to use a drive not set for A:, it will refuse to seek. However, if I switch the plug on the floppy cable from before the twist to after the twist, the inverse happens (i.e. before the twist, only 3.5 inch floppy is usable and after twist, only 5.25 inch floppy is usable). What could possibly be causing this? I have both Floppy A and B set in the BIOS... but still no dice getting both to work.

Matt

hi

i had the same issue on my 486 with both
5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drives on the same cable
and controller.

on the 5 1/4 drive i seem to remember changing
the drive selection jumper from use drive select
to use motor enable or vice versa. drive select
a/b and motor enable a/b are seperate lines
on the cable.

see if you have such an option on the 5 1/4
part of your combo drive.

bye

What sort of combo drive do you own?

Matt

hi

i don't have a combo drive. i will need to take the 486
out of hibernation to determine how it ended up
being configured and what the floppy drive models
are.

i just checked out the epson ftp site:
ftp://ftp.ftp.epson.com/desktop/SD800.TXT

it suggests it ought to just work for you with
A drive being 3.5 and B being 5.25 if A is
after the twist and jumper is in the A position?

it's worth mentioning that all drives are jumpered
as B normally with the twist reversing the B to A.
actually, it's not worth mentioning, anything to
do with floppy drives makes my brain explode.

good luck.
bye