Some sort of BIOS protection of boot sector perhaps? There should be a menu entry to disable it.

This introduces a new dimension of the hanging note bug.

First thing which comes to mind is indeed some boot sector virus protection, but this should come from the PC speaker (if not routed through a sound card).

It could also be some resource conflict, but i'm guessing you're not using IRQ #6 for sound.

PD2JK wrote on 2023-12-15, 12:35:

This introduces a new dimension of the hanging note bug.

First thing which comes to mind is indeed some boot sector virus protection, but this should come from the PC speaker (if not routed through a sound card).

It could also be some resource conflict, but i'm guessing you're not using IRQ #6 for sound.

The beep is indeed coming from the PC speaker, not from the Mozart. As far as I can see is an IRQ-conflict out of the question.

What exactly are you doing? The "format a:" command?
What happens when formatting using other tools, eg. under Windows?
No problems with reading and writing, only with formatting, right?
Have you tried with minimum software config, ie. empty CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT ?
Have you tried with minimum hardware config, ie. no cards other than graphics?

Easiest way to narrow down hardware issues is: remove everything not essential. If the motherboard with nothing but video card booting DOS on an HD and then you try to format a floppy gives an error you then there is a big issue.
Have you tested the floppy drives in other computers ? Are you using a beta or patched bios ? What video card ?

The beep is not coming when I do format a: under Windows 98 SE. I will do some of the other tests.

I installed on the PC nothing but DOS 6.22 and removed all the cards except the NVidia videocard (PCI slot). Further on I had a PS2 mouse installed. Starting format A: caused once again the beep as mentioned in the posts above. With an S3 video card instead of the NVidia the result was the same. I want to try if the beep is coming under windows 3.11.

egbertjan wrote on 2023-12-16, 11:06:

The beep is not coming when I do format a: under Windows 98 SE. I will do some of the other tests.

Win95 and later systems do not use BIOS to access floppy drives in favour of 32-bit protected mode code, and that would explain why there are no beeps. The boot sector protection code is not being triggered.

Did you try DISKCOPY in pure DOS? AFAIK it will overwrite the bootsector so that should trigger the BIOS during write as well.

There's also software for DOS that accesses the FDC directly - try eg. Diskdupe.

Deunan wrote on 2023-12-19, 14:35:

Win95 and later systems do not use BIOS to access floppy drives in favour of 32-bit protected mode code, and that would explain why there are no beeps. The boot sector protection code is not being triggered.

Yeah... I noticed that so far OP has not said a peep about having looked into this. Whenever I volunteer to help people and they flat out ignore my suggestions, I've found it's overall best for my mental health to just abandon thread. Maybe they come around later, maybe not, no skin off my back. But if you have the time and nerves to keep prodding, more power to you.

I have loaded the default settings in the BIOS and compared all the settings with the ones I entered before. I found out that the Delayed Transaction must be disabled. When it is enabled I get the beep after format A:. It also turned out that the problem with the Mozart soundcard was over. Does anybody know what the function of the Delayed Transaction is?

egbertjan wrote on 2023-12-19, 20:08:

I have loaded the default settings in the BIOS and compared all the settings with the ones I entered before. I found out that the Delayed Transaction must be disabled. When it is enabled I get the beep after format A:. It also turned out that the problem with the Mozart soundcard was over. Does anybody know what the function of the Delayed Transaction is?

is it this https://www.techarp.com/bios-guide/delayed-transaction/ ?

egbertjan wrote on 2023-12-19, 20:08:

I found out that the Delayed Transaction must be disabled. When it is enabled I get the beep after format A:. It also turned out that the problem with the Mozart soundcard was over.

That is very odd. I wonder if there might be a bug in the BIOS code, and the floppy routine is somehow tripping it unless the mobo/chipset is set to specific values that don't trigger the bug?
The Mozart card might indeed have some issues with Delayed Transaction but the FDC is part of the mobo. If you have free ISA slots you could try disabling the onboard FDC (and perhaps IDE as well) and adding extra ISA-based card to handle floppies and HDD. Just for testing, to see if that too triggers the beep.

BTW posting some photos of your BIOS settings could be useful at this point, maybe someone can spot a setting that can be tweaked.

Here I post the photos Deunan asked for.

Besides, is there someone who can give suggestions for better settings?

"Floppy disk access control" is a curious option. What are the choices under that?

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-12-27, 00:06:

"Floppy disk access control" is a curious option. What are the choices under that?

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