Author: Rob Malpass Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: [Hampshire] Floppy drives
Hi all
How robust are floppy drives - both 3.5 and 5.25?
I'm about to throw away the first PC I ever owned (486DX40 - 2Mb RAM). The only piece of kit I'd like to keep is the 5.25" floppy drive - I have a spare drive bay elsewhere and no real need of 5.25" media it but you never know.
For the life of me I've struggled to daisy chain the 5.25" in line with the 3.5". Part of the problem is the only cable I have that has connectors for both has no ridge in the centre so I don't know whether I'm alligning it correctly. Thus far I have:
1) Powered up - but nothing happened - no fans or anything - swapped cable around (so red connection is at opposite end)
2) Then it powered up - but the 3.5" activity light is on solidly - so changed connector (there are 2 on the cable) and used another one.
3) Now powers up and all looks good but when I click on the 3.5" drive icon (XP) I get "please insert a disk" (and yes there is one in there already).
This is even before I've managed to get any activity out of the 5.25. I've set the BIOS accordingly but no dice.
Have I broken the drive or can they take a bit of fiddling like this?
