(I assume the floppy cable looks exactly like the one posted in your other thread by mkarcher)
Light staying on indicates the cable is connected the opposite way. Make sure pin 1 on the cable goes to pin 1 on all 3 connectors. You can always try one drive at a time to identify the problems easier.

After you fix the connection problem you need to enter the BIOS and declare the drives types correctly, the way they are connected on the cable.
Once you have them working we'll se how to switch A and B, there might even be a BIOS option for that.

Hi yes the cable I’m using is the same type as pictured in the other topic I made I’m a bit confused as you mentioned pin 1 should be connected to all 3 connectors do you mean the side of cable witch is pin 1
And the same side of cable to all 3 connectors

Yes, pin 1 is marked with a red color on most cables. Make sure it matches pin 1 on the two drives and on the motherboard connector. Even if there isn't any physical keying and the cable can be connected with the red marking facing left or right, it shouldn't. It should always connect to pin 1 for all 3 connections. Try to identify which is pin 1 (on the motherboard usually it's obvious having both a marking on the PCB and a keyed connector) and if you can't, for example on the 3.5" drive, try both orientations. It's a data cable you won't fry anything (it's already wrongly connected) and one of them will make the light turn off. Edit: StriderTR is correct, for floppies usually pin 1 is on the left as you're looking the drive from the back, just not always.

Normally, pin 1 on the drive is on the left side of the connector when looking at it straight on from the back.

Pin 1 on the motherboard connector is sometimes indicated on the motherboard itself, look around the connector for a marker of some kind, like a number, arrow, or a white square. If nothing is there, check in the motherboards manual. You can often find them online and they almost always indicate pin 1 in the manual.

Possible reasons why two drives would be selected at once:

1) The floppy cable is direct, missing the "twist" between the DRIVE A:
connector and the DRIVE B: connector. - This twist moves the signals for
drive A: select and motor-on to the drive B: positions on the furthest
connector. This means that drive A: has to be jumpered as B: - and in
fact is most likely why IBM did this - they only had to sell/stock one
floppy drive (which was jumpered as B: and would work as drive A: at the
cable end connector (past the twist), and drive B: at the inner connector
(no twist). Unfortunately (IIRC) these signals don't line up exactly to
a standard cable/FDC and you can't just use a straight cable with drive A:
jumpered as A:

2) The floppy drives are jumpered incorrectly. As noted above the drives
must BOTH be jumpered as drive B: - the actual logical position A: or B:
is determined by the placement on the cable.

3) Floppy cable plugged in backward!
All the pins on one side are ground, and the drive select inputs activate
the drive at 0V - so plugging in the cable backward will ground all the
selects and activate all the drives.

This seems unlikely since your system reports one drive - but I've encountered
BIOSs which always report a configured A: drive is present!

Easiest way to tell if this is the problem is that drives will come on as
soon as you power the system (even before any self-tests), and will not go
off - they also won't seek during detection.

If both drives come ON together a bit after power, and both go OFF
together (and possibly seek together during their detection), then it is a
good sign that the problem is related to the select configuration and not
a reversed cable.

4) This won't be the problem if you have had two drives working on this system
before, but I have encountered mainboards which only implement one floppy
drive select, and a few of those activate that one drive on either select
(that way the customer doesn't have to know how to jumper drives or have
to change out the drive cable.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 17:45:

Hi yes the cable I’m using is the same type as pictured in the other topic I made I’m a bit confused as you mentioned pin 1 should be connected to all 3 connectors do you mean the side of cable witch is pin 1
And the same side of cable to all 3 connectors

First, I saw no picture of YOUR floppy drive cable after combing through all your threads and replies. I found only the file provided by mkarcher:

Second, both of your 5.25" and 3.5" drives were in horizontal orientations and with shortest possible distance (lowermost 5.25" bay + uppermost 3.5" bay); I couldn't help wondering that you might have connected both drives with respective "A" connectors beyond that "twist." No offense, but judging from that you couldn't tell a 40-pin IDE cable from a 34-pin FDD cable, this error was highly probable. It was a common error back in the days when most computers have 5.25" and 3.5" drives together; having two drives apart in longer distances could reduce the chance of this error from happening.

And please use proper punctuation marks; use a physical keyboard instead of your smartphone if possible.