VOGONS


First post, by Atom Ant

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Hey guys!

I am having trouble to use 5.25 floppy drive and the smaller one with the same cable. The big drive has jumpers, do not know how to use them. The cable does not make me sense either, it has two small, two big floppy drive and a motherboard connector. So altogether five connections.
Please check the attached pictures and help if you can.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0VtEBTcPG5b-mymPE3lQiWLbg

My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...

Reply 1 of 14, by kaputnik

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Sure you haven't done the classical mistake? You can only use one connector in each pair at the same time. In your pic, 1+2 is one pair, 3 + the unnumbered edge connector in the end of the cable is another. Might also be good to know that the A drive goes in 3 or the unnumbered one, B-drive in 1 or 2.

Can't help you with the jumpers, haven't configured a 5.25" floppy drive since I was a kid. If I remember it right, you do some low level hardware config with those jumpers though, chances are they're correctly set for normal PC usage already, if you haven't touched them.

Reply 2 of 14, by Jo22

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I think the same. 1+2 and 2+3 are for the same floppies (B and A), just have different shapes.

Edit: Link to website removed due to malware. Instead, adding static link to the picture.

fddcable.jpg

Last edited by Jo22 on 2018-10-06, 11:38. Edited 1 time in total.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 14, by Jo22

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derSammler wrote:
Jo22 wrote:

Be careful when linking to that website. It tries to install a CryptoMiner when accessing the home page.

Phew! 😅 Thanks for the info my friend! I didn't notice, probably because I'm using Adblock.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 5 of 14, by Atom Ant

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Kaputnik

Thanks for the explanation! I did not know I can use only one connector in each pair. And I will use for the A drive (for small floppy) the connector 3. For the big floppy the connector 2. Fortunately I did not touch the jumpers on the big Floppy, so should work. I’ll write back!

My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...

Reply 6 of 14, by dionb

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Note the twist in the cable. The drive on the end past the twist is drive A: (or fd0), the drive before the twist is drive B: (or fd1). If you want it the other way round, you need a BIOS option like "Swap Floppy Drive" or similar to exchange them at that level.

Reply 7 of 14, by Matth79

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The other thing, you may find a terminator option on the drive (abbreviated to TM)... deselect termination for the drive in the middle

Reply 8 of 14, by Atom Ant

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So, I spent 1,5 hours with it and it is working finally 😀 The best thing, i insereted one of my big old floppy disc into the drive and it could read! After 21years... And the disc contained a game, that I just start to remember..., called Wolfpack,

uvEQ94b.jpg

Cannot wait to read the rest of my big floppy discs...

However the drives are only working if I put the small floppy drive to the 3.connector and the big floppy to the second. And it is not the most convinient way, because it does not give enough space to fit the drives into their space. I would need cable with longer distance between the connectors or some extension.
If I could use the 4th connector for the big floppy and the 1st connector for the small floppy Everything would fit comfortable. But Unfortunatelly I do not see in bios the swap floppy option.

Matth79
What is that terminator option?

My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...

Reply 9 of 14, by dionb

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Which motherboard do you have?

Reply 10 of 14, by kaputnik

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Atom Ant wrote:
So, I spent 1,5 hours with it and it is working finally :) The best thing, i insereted one of my big old floppy disc into the dr […]
Show full quote

So, I spent 1,5 hours with it and it is working finally 😀 The best thing, i insereted one of my big old floppy disc into the drive and it could read! After 21years... And the disc contained a game, that I just start to remember..., called Wolfpack,
Cannot wait to read the rest of my big floppy discs...

However the drives are only working if I put the small floppy drive to the 3.connector and the big floppy to the second. And it is not the most convinient way, because it does not give enough space to fit the drives into their space. I would need cable with longer distance between the connectors or some extension.
If I could use the 4th connector for the big floppy and the 1st connector for the small floppy Everything would fit comfortable. But Unfortunatelly I do not see in bios the swap floppy option.

Matth79
What is that terminator option?

Ah, cool! So, what was it? Just a wrongly connected cable?

Yeah, also been astounded by those 5.25" floppies resilience. Repaired my old C64 which had a broken serial interface a while ago (two decoupling diodes were blown), and all but one of those 30-35 years old floppies I tried afterwards worked just fine 😀

Well, the first thing I'd try would be to connect and pull that cable a few times to ensure it makes contact, just in case the connectors has oxidized/gotten dirty through the years. If that won't work, it might be an idea to have a closer look at those jumpers, might be that you have to do some configuration after all. A sharp closeup pic of the jumper header, where any PCB markings are readable, would probably be helpful.

Wiki explains electrical termination far better than I ever could in a non-native language. If there's a termination jumper, you'd have it closed if the drive in question was the last in the chain (read: as A drive on the 3rd or 4th connector), to terminate the signal cable.

The more modern 3.5" drives terminates automatically. Never seen one you have to terminate manually at least.

Reply 11 of 14, by Atom Ant

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This is the Intel PR440FX motherboard. Quite modern for floppy drives. I was connecting back and forth the connectors so many times. I even tried just the small floppy drive to use (big floppy was unconnected) with the connector 1, but would not work, only with the connector 3.

My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...

Reply 12 of 14, by Atom Ant

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So After more work I think the big floppy would work from the 4th connector, while the small floppy plugged into the 1st connector. But the machine only tries to boot from the big floppy. But I have the boot media on the small floppy. I do not find settings to force the computer to boot from small floppy. I can select only “floppy” for boot in the bios. Anyway, i am unsure if the small floppy in working, somehow I should boot with the big floppy to dos to check.

Here it looks now in bios. I tried the opposite settings too, when the B is the floppy 1.44 and the A is the 1.2mb

GGVKofY.jpg?1

My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...

Reply 13 of 14, by dionb

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Atom Ant wrote:

This is the Intel PR440FX motherboard. Quite modern for floppy drives. I was connecting back and forth the connectors so many times. I even tried just the small floppy drive to use (big floppy was unconnected) with the connector 1, but would not work, only with the connector 3.

Beautiful board, but fairly limited Intel OEM BIOS. No swap floppy options I can find either.

That makes it simple:
- drive after the twist on the cable: A:
- drive before the twist on the cable: B:

And it can only boot from A:, so the drive at the end of the cable.

All you can (and must!) do in BIOS is tell the BIOS which drive is in which position. So if you want to boot from the 3.5" drive, it needs to be the one after the twist. If that doesn't fit with your cable and the case you're using, you need a longer cable...

Edit:
Or if you're feeling brave you can mod the cable, putting a second twist between the motherboard and first drive, which effectively reverses the drives.

Reply 14 of 14, by Atom Ant

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Well, thanks for the explanation. Before twist is B, After twist is A. It will be easy to remember. Even if cable do not fit with my house, at least i understand how these difficult things are working...

My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...