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Quad-Flop...Not quite as straightforward as I thought..

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First post, by Vipersan

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After receiving my quad flop board ..I set about building a disk based machine that could handle most formats.
It consisted of 4 floppy drives 1: 1.44mb 3.5" 2:720k 3.5" 3 1.2mb 5.25" and 4:360k 5.25"
Now I'm uncertain about the 720k ex Zenith Supersport drive as I'm not convinced it fully compliant with PC spec.
Nonetheless it did work with the quad-flop with a basic DOS os...
..so on to phase 2
The quad-flop was configured so I built up a Win98se system hoping the 4 floppy drives would just be 'picked up' during the build ..it was at this point I started to think I might have a faulty quad-flop or the MB-8500TTD mobo had compatibility issues with the card..
the install simply would not complete throwing up this error >>>> "While initializing device IOS:
Windows Protection error. You need to restart your computer."
After much pondering ..and hair tugging...I was getting to the point of giving up.
I watched Shelby and Phintage collector youtube vids many times over in case I missed something important...and came away none the wiser.
It looked like win98 only supported 2 floppy drives at most ?
I could NOT find any answers...until I discovered this link...
https://retroshack.net/2024/08/22/texelec-qua … er/#comment-621
Well at least it wasn't just me then.
I tried simply switching off the quad flop rom....and the 98 build completed WITHOUT the error...and drives A and B were listed.
I'm still uncertain about that 720k drive as it is unreliable and sluggish and gives a drive not recognised error ..press F1 to continue error at boot.
I re-ordered the drives so that windows only sees A:1.44mb .....and B:1.2mb.
The error at boot went away.
I have to assume the 720k 3.5" drive is not standard compliance thus doesn't play nice with 98se.
all in all it has been a frustrating couple of days....and I will have to follow retroshacks advice and fit a manual switch to enable/disable the quad-flop rom when using DOS or Win98se.
It would have been usefull to know these comliance issues when buying the card from TexElec.
I'm sure the creator of the card would have known....but I for one did not.
I doubt there would be a rom fix for this in the future...as the problem appears to lie with Win98...and built in limitations.
I hope this info will be helpful to anyone considering such a build.
rgds
VS
Comments/advice most welcome as always.

Reply 1 of 8, by maxtherabbit

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Trying to get more than 2 floppy drives in windows 9x should not even be attempted IMO, it's a disaster. If you want 3-4 floppies you need to use DOS and/or win 3.1, regardless of the hardware/firmware used to achieve it.

Reply 2 of 8, by bertrammatrix

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Shouldn't there be no real need for 720k, since a regular 1.44 drive can deal with those?

Unless of course it's a "just because you can" thing

Reply 3 of 8, by Vipersan

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bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-11-01, 15:44:

Shouldn't there be no real need for 720k, since a regular 1.44 drive can deal with those?

Unless of course it's a "just because you can" thing

yep ...you are correct...just cos I had the drive and a spare bay.
I suppose technically the tracks would be wider so less chance of cross talk when writing 720k reusing old disks..
a just because I can thing.

Reply 4 of 8, by SScorpio

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bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-11-01, 15:44:

Shouldn't there be no real need for 720k, since a regular 1.44 drive can deal with those?

Unless of course it's a "just because you can" thing

For reading? Sure.

But writing, you really want a 720K drive if you are creating disks that will be used on other systems. That way a 1.44M drive writes to the disk is a little different. 1.44M drives will read them fine. But 720K drives can have issues.

Reply 5 of 8, by Vipersan

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-11-01, 15:31:

Trying to get more than 2 floppy drives in windows 9x should not even be attempted IMO, it's a disaster. If you want 3-4 floppies you need to use DOS and/or win 3.1, regardless of the hardware/firmware used to achieve it.

Totally agree.....took me a while to realise it was foolish to try.
But at least I can have it switched now to use 2 drives in win98 or the full quota in DOS.
😉

Reply 6 of 8, by Vipersan

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SScorpio wrote on 2025-11-01, 16:23:
bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-11-01, 15:44:

Shouldn't there be no real need for 720k, since a regular 1.44 drive can deal with those?

Unless of course it's a "just because you can" thing

For reading? Sure.

But writing, you really want a 720K drive if you are creating disks that will be used on other systems. That way a 1.44M drive writes to the disk is a little different. 1.44M drives will read them fine. But 720K drives can have issues.

nailed it buddy...I wanted a way to write pukka 720k floppies

Reply 7 of 8, by maxtherabbit

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I have never once had a disk interchange problem with 3.5" DD disks being written on an HD drive.

5.25" sure since the tracks are a different width, but on 3.5" the only difference is the data rate

proper HD drives have a media sense switch to detect the DD diskette and adjust the write current appropriately

Reply 8 of 8, by Vipersan

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FWIW I've decided to build the OS's on CF cards ...with a rear mounted adapter..
That way I can build a DOS/Win 3.1 OS as well ..so can easily be switched out with 98se when needed.
rgds

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