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#1
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floppy drive turmoil
Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive in my PC, as I mentioned in
this group. The hard drive is working fine. However, yesterday I wanted to read a floppy disk... but the floppy drive seemed stone dead. In Windows explorer kept telling me to insert media but the floppy disk was in alright. Tried another floppy disk and still no media was found. Took a look at Windows - system - devices and there it was: Drive A, no explanation mark or nothing out of order. Looked under properties and it said the device is working properly. (!) Today I opened the case and had a look inside. It seems I had forgotten to reconnect the power cable of the floppy drive after the hard disk repair job. After connecting everything works OK again. I'm very surprised though that Windows didn't give any clue that there ws something wrong with drive A... -- |\ /| | \/ |@rk \../ \/os |
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#2
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floppy drive turmoil
On 03/25/2017 07:56 AM, Linea Recta wrote:
Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive in my PC, as I mentioned in this group. The hard drive is working fine. However, yesterday I wanted to read a floppy disk... but the floppy drive seemed stone dead. In Windows explorer kept telling me to insert media but the floppy disk was in alright. Tried another floppy disk and still no media was found. Took a look at Windows - system - devices and there it was: Drive A, no explanation mark or nothing out of order. Looked under properties and it said the device is working properly. (!) Today I opened the case and had a look inside. It seems I had forgotten to reconnect the power cable of the floppy drive after the hard disk repair job. After connecting everything works OK again. I'm very surprised though that Windows didn't give any clue that there ws something wrong with drive A... Probably looking no further than the BIOS. I bet the same happens with older versions of Windows too... I am sure I've seen that back in the Win9x days |
#3
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:56:59 +0100, "Linea Recta"
wrote: Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive in my PC, as I mentioned in this group. The hard drive is working fine. However, yesterday I wanted to read a floppy disk... but the floppy drive seemed stone dead. In Windows explorer kept telling me to insert media but the floppy disk was in alright. Tried another floppy disk and still no media was found. Took a look at Windows - system - devices and there it was: Drive A, no explanation mark or nothing out of order. Looked under properties and it said the device is working properly. (!) Today I opened the case and had a look inside. It seems I had forgotten to reconnect the power cable of the floppy drive after the hard disk repair job. After connecting everything works OK again. I'm very surprised though that Windows didn't give any clue that there ws something wrong with drive A... http://www.uwe-sieber.de/misc_tools_e.html Device cleanup will remove references to hardware that is not present. Use it very carefully. It removed a ton of stuff from my PC, sound cards and monitors that died years ago and all USB devices that were not plugged in.. It probably would have removed the reference to A: and you would have to reinstall the drivers when you plugged the drive back in. OTOH, floppy drives might be blacklisted. Can't test. I made images of all my floppies ages ago with Winimage, all 600+ of them, and burned them to CDRoms. You can mount the images, or even open them with 7-Zip (or Winimage) if you need any data. Keeping data on old floppy disks is risky. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#4
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floppy drive turmoil
"Shadow" schreef in bericht
... On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:56:59 +0100, "Linea Recta" wrote: Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive in my PC, as I mentioned in this group. The hard drive is working fine. However, yesterday I wanted to read a floppy disk... but the floppy drive seemed stone dead. In Windows explorer kept telling me to insert media but the floppy disk was in alright. Tried another floppy disk and still no media was found. Took a look at Windows - system - devices and there it was: Drive A, no explanation mark or nothing out of order. Looked under properties and it said the device is working properly. (!) Today I opened the case and had a look inside. It seems I had forgotten to reconnect the power cable of the floppy drive after the hard disk repair job. After connecting everything works OK again. I'm very surprised though that Windows didn't give any clue that there ws something wrong with drive A... http://www.uwe-sieber.de/misc_tools_e.html Device cleanup will remove references to hardware that is not present. Use it very carefully. It removed a ton of stuff from my PC, sound cards and monitors that died years ago and all USB devices that were not plugged in.. It probably would have removed the reference to A: and you would have to reinstall the drivers when you plugged the drive back in. OTOH, floppy drives might be blacklisted. Can't test. I made images of all my floppies ages ago with Winimage, all 600+ of them, and burned them to CDRoms. You can mount the images, or even open them with 7-Zip (or Winimage) if you need any data. Keeping data on old floppy disks is risky. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 I don't use the floppy drive very often, but I want to have everything in working order anyhow. Besides, it may come in handy if I ever need to boot from external media if I have trouble with the DVD drive... -- |\ /| | \/ |@rk \../ \/os |
#6
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 12:00:14 -0300, pjp
wrote: My old floppies are all stored in a box under the basement stairs. Few thousand at least. None of it is worth even attempting to read anymore, all over 20 years old. Most disks won't even format properly and the few that do can't be trusted anyway. My last computer had a floppy drive that I insisted the builder install in it. I had it for about five years and never used it, not even once. So my current computer doesn't have a floppy drive, and I threw out all my old floppies. I'm unsure if buying new floppies would improve that but why bother when dvd's can be had for $0.30 a disk bought in bulk. Even less--about $.20 each. Anything of value got copied and burned onto cd/dvd's years ago now. Same here. |
#7
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floppy drive turmoil
Linea Recta wrote:
Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive in my PC, as I mentioned in this group. The hard drive is working fine. However, yesterday I wanted to read a floppy disk... but the floppy drive seemed stone dead. In Windows explorer kept telling me to insert media but the floppy disk was in alright. Tried another floppy disk and still no media was found. Took a look at Windows - system - devices and there it was: Drive A, no explanation mark or nothing out of order. Looked under properties and it said the device is working properly. (!) Today I opened the case and had a look inside. It seems I had forgotten to reconnect the power cable of the floppy drive after the hard disk repair job. After connecting everything works OK again. I'm very surprised though that Windows didn't give any clue that there ws something wrong with drive A... Floppy drives are "dumb" devices and don't have PNP (Plug And Play) information. The controller (logic block in the SuperI/O) on the other hand, does have PNP. If you switch on the floppy in the BIOS, when Windows boots, it "sees" the SuperI/O logic block. But it cannot determine anything about the floppy drive on the cable at that point. CPU | | SuperI/O ---- floppy cable ------ floppy_drive (dumb device) There are a couple flavors of drives. The Macintosh drives had motorized eject, and they also seemed to have "Media Presence" detect. (The inserted floppy pressed on a microswitch ot something like that.) Windows floppies don't have motorized eject, and maybe the first realization no media is present, comes when the controller logic block goes to do a read, and no transitions on /RDATA are seen. And then the notification box "No Media" appears, which covers both actual no media being in the drive, as well as, say, the head being ripped off the arm of the drive. But other than that, the floppy drive doesn't have a processor. There is no "clever communication" between the floppy and the SuperI/O. Unlike a SATA drive, where there is a processor in the SATA drive, and packets travel over the data cable as a communications path. The floppy just has a bunch of mechanical control signals like Motor Enable, Step, Head Select. Drive "A" appears in Windows, as soon as the SuperI/O logic block is enabled in the BIOS. And I don't know if there is an encoding in the registers there somewhere, indicating how many drives are supported. There was some crazy scheme at one point, to support up to four floppy drives. But I don't remember the details. It's expected the user will recognize their computer case has no floppy drive, and program the BIOS logic block setting appropriately (disable the SuperI/O FDC if no drives are equipped in the computer case). ******* If you rotate the floppy controller cable 180 degrees and plug it in, the LED on the floppy drive should remain asserted. And that would be a clue you screwed up. It the power cable was disconnected, there would be a pronounced lack of clicking, whirring, and LED flashing. Paul |
#8
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floppy drive turmoil
"Paul" schreef in bericht
news Linea Recta wrote: Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive in my PC, as I mentioned in this group. The hard drive is working fine. However, yesterday I wanted to read a floppy disk... but the floppy drive seemed stone dead. In Windows explorer kept telling me to insert media but the floppy disk was in alright. Tried another floppy disk and still no media was found. Took a look at Windows - system - devices and there it was: Drive A, no explanation mark or nothing out of order. Looked under properties and it said the device is working properly. (!) Today I opened the case and had a look inside. It seems I had forgotten to reconnect the power cable of the floppy drive after the hard disk repair job. After connecting everything works OK again. I'm very surprised though that Windows didn't give any clue that there ws something wrong with drive A... Floppy drives are "dumb" devices and don't have PNP (Plug And Play) information. The controller (logic block in the SuperI/O) on the other hand, does have PNP. If you switch on the floppy in the BIOS, when Windows boots, it "sees" the SuperI/O logic block. But it cannot determine anything about the floppy drive on the cable at that point. CPU | | SuperI/O ---- floppy cable ------ floppy_drive (dumb device) There are a couple flavors of drives. The Macintosh drives had motorized eject, and they also seemed to have "Media Presence" detect. (The inserted floppy pressed on a microswitch ot something like that.) Windows floppies don't have motorized eject, and maybe the first realization no media is present, comes when the controller logic block goes to do a read, and no transitions on /RDATA are seen. And then the notification box "No Media" appears, which covers both actual no media being in the drive, as well as, say, the head being ripped off the arm of the drive. But other than that, the floppy drive doesn't have a processor. There is no "clever communication" between the floppy and the SuperI/O. Unlike a SATA drive, where there is a processor in the SATA drive, and packets travel over the data cable as a communications path. The floppy just has a bunch of mechanical control signals like Motor Enable, Step, Head Select. Drive "A" appears in Windows, as soon as the SuperI/O logic block is enabled in the BIOS. And I don't know if there is an encoding in the registers there somewhere, indicating how many drives are supported. There was some crazy scheme at one point, to support up to four floppy drives. But I don't remember the details. It's expected the user will recognize their computer case has no floppy drive, and program the BIOS logic block setting appropriately (disable the SuperI/O FDC if no drives are equipped in the computer case). ******* If you rotate the floppy controller cable 180 degrees and plug it in, the LED on the floppy drive should remain asserted. And that would be a clue you screwed up. It the power cable was disconnected, there would be a pronounced lack of clicking, whirring, and LED flashing. Paul Thanks for your expert background information. You're right: I missed the clicking sounds yesterday, but now all is OK again. As you can see, I don't use the floppy drive very often. I didn't notice it disfunctioning from 6-1-2017 until yesterday... -- |\ /| | \/ |@rk \../ \/os |
#9
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:56:59 +0100
"Linea Recta" wrote: From: "Linea Recta" Subject: floppy drive turmoil Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:56:59 +0100 Newsgroups: alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.stor age Organization: A noiseless patient Spider X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Mail 6.0.6002.18197 Some time ago I mounted a new SATA hard drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil |
#10
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:32:36 +0100, "Linea Recta"
wrote: As you can see, I don't use the floppy drive very often. I didn't notice it disfunctioning from 6-1-2017 until yesterday... I read that date as June 1, 2017, and thought it was odd before realizing it's really January 6, 2017. :-) -- Char Jackson |
#11
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floppy drive turmoil
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#12
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 16:32:09 -0300, pjp
wrote: In article , says... On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 12:00:14 -0300, pjp wrote: My old floppies are all stored in a box under the basement stairs. Few thousand at least. None of it is worth even attempting to read anymore, all over 20 years old. Most disks won't even format properly and the few that do can't be trusted anyway. My last computer had a floppy drive that I insisted the builder install in it. I had it for about five years and never used it, not even once. So my current computer doesn't have a floppy drive, and I threw out all my old floppies. I'm unsure if buying new floppies would improve that but why bother when dvd's can be had for $0.30 a disk bought in bulk. Even less--about $.20 each. Anything of value got copied and burned onto cd/dvd's years ago now. Same here. Canada, when not on sale low $30's for 100 stack. I know nothing about Canadian prices. Amazon has several brands for around $20 a hundred. |
#13
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 14:04:07 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote: On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:32:36 +0100, "Linea Recta" wrote: As you can see, I don't use the floppy drive very often. I didn't notice it disfunctioning from 6-1-2017 until yesterday... I read that date as June 1, 2017, and thought it was odd before realizing it's really January 6, 2017. :-) I don't like either method of formatting dates. As far as I'm concerned, it should be Y-M-D, since that's sortable. |
#14
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 12:51:48 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote: On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 14:04:07 -0500, Char Jackson wrote: On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:32:36 +0100, "Linea Recta" wrote: As you can see, I don't use the floppy drive very often. I didn't notice it disfunctioning from 6-1-2017 until yesterday... I read that date as June 1, 2017, and thought it was odd before realizing it's really January 6, 2017. :-) I don't like either method of formatting dates. As far as I'm concerned, it should be Y-M-D, since that's sortable. +1 That's what I use for all my backups. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#15
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floppy drive turmoil
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 12:51:48 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote: On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 14:04:07 -0500, Char Jackson wrote: On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:32:36 +0100, "Linea Recta" wrote: As you can see, I don't use the floppy drive very often. I didn't notice it disfunctioning from 6-1-2017 until yesterday... I read that date as June 1, 2017, and thought it was odd before realizing it's really January 6, 2017. :-) I don't like either method of formatting dates. As far as I'm concerned, it should be Y-M-D, since that's sortable. +1 |
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