VOGONS


First post, by Killer robot

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I'm having strange experiences with floppy disk access on a Socket 7 motherboard. It's not that it can't access the floppy drive at all, but rather all floppy reads are corrupted and useless.

The hardware used:
The board is a Jamicon KM-V5-VPX with a Pentium 133 and 32 MB RAM. (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/jamico … b-km-v5-v2-v1.0).
Connected to it are a Trident PCI video card, a Gotek with Flashfloppy, and a 512MB CF card with DOS 6.22 already installed.

What works:
BIOS detects CF card and will boot from DOS on the CF card.
Floppy drive will seek and activate. Gotek display shows it run through the tracks during POST as usual.

What does not work:
The system will not boot from floppy. It hangs immediately. Gotek shows a moment's search (track 0, heads 0/1) then stops with activity light on.
When booted from CF, DOS will read the floppy but shows errors and visual corruption in the directory listing. Will not launch programs. Sometimes, as a special treat, it shows "general failure reading drive A", but usually the corrupted patterns are very consistent between reboots, like the A:\ directory listing on a given disk having the same typos or garbage data every time.

RG1Zi3q.jpeg

What I have tried:
Using different known-good floppy images
Using the Gotek on other systems
Using a physical floppy with working disk
Replacing the floppy cable
Replacing the CPU
Replacing the RAM
Disabling onboard FDC and installing an ISA controller
Dumping BIOS to compare to Retroweb copy (no differences in binary)

At this point I don't even have a remaining theory of what might be causing the issue. Has anyone else experienced an issue like this?

Reply 1 of 2, by Major Jackyl

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Have you tried removing your CF adapter? I would try removing or disabling in BIOS, see if that could be messing with it. Just boot from a physical floppy, to rule out the "modern" upgrades, sometimes those don't play nice.

If the floppy drive can't boot, did that same drive write the disk? Maybe some drive is misaligned and it can't read what it wrote. Try writing the boot disk with the same drive that's going to read it.

Disabling everything on the I/O controller might help, too. I'd want to guess, if all else checks out, there may be damage to the board between the connector and I/O controller (HT6552IR), bridging pins and corrupting the data. Maybe the chip is just failing? Could be that resistor pack, it looks like it has read data going by it. Maybe voltage/ripple is corrupting the read?

I was looking up that Holtek I/O controller and screenshot the wiring diagram for the floppy connector. I'm no expert yet, but that looks simple to follow/inspect. Somewhere to start, hopefully. I hate these type of problems, but at the same time, find very interesting.

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Main Loadout (daily drivers):
Intel TE430VX, Pentium Sy022 (133), Cirrus Logic 5440, SB16 CT1740
ECS K7S5A, A-XP1600+, MSI R9550
ASUS M2N-E, A64X2-4600+, PNY GTX670, SB X-Fi Elite Pro
MSI Z690, Intel 12900K, MSI RTX3090, SB AE-7

Reply 2 of 2, by Major Jackyl

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I missed that you tried a ISA card. Did it act any differently with that? Was the CF still in at the time?

Main Loadout (daily drivers):
Intel TE430VX, Pentium Sy022 (133), Cirrus Logic 5440, SB16 CT1740
ECS K7S5A, A-XP1600+, MSI R9550
ASUS M2N-E, A64X2-4600+, PNY GTX670, SB X-Fi Elite Pro
MSI Z690, Intel 12900K, MSI RTX3090, SB AE-7