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Floppy light stays on and won't read

By bob ·
Newly built system.
Everything seems to be working fine.
It has an intel 875PEBZ board, which supports SATA RAID under Windows XP.
RAID enabled in bios, entered setup, pressed cntrl + I to load RAID drivers, pressed "S" when prompted, but the system cannot read the disc.
The floppy light stays on. I know that this is usually the result of a reversed ribbon cable, but I am using the round style cables that cannot be reversed. Tried a regular ribbon cable, still same thing.
I looked in BIOS for floppy configuration, but unless I am missing something, all this does is to enable or disable the disc controller and diskette write protect. It sees floppy A as 1.44MB 3 1/2 inches.
Can someone tell me what I am missing and how to amend this situation?

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by TheChas In reply to Floppy light stays on and ...

To verify that the floppy drive is okay, what happens when you power up with NO cable connected to the drive?
If the light stays on with no cable, you have a bad drive.

It still sounds like a reversed cable.

Even the round cables can be connected backward.

On most floppy drives, pin 1 of the data cable is on the far side of the drive. The opposite of hard and CD drives.

I have seen motherboard floppy connectors that are keyed, many are not keyed and will not accept keyed cables.

The key location on the drive end is pin 3.
On the motherboard end, the key is pin 5.

Chas

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by TheChas In reply to

BIOS settings for floppy drive type do not actually read the drive.
1.44MB 3 1/2" drive is likely the default value.

Chas

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by bob In reply to

Chas,
Right on target again, Sir.
I knew that the problem could be caused by a reversed cable, and tried. Unfortunately, I didn't try hard enough. I have a phobia of forcing stubborn components. I am fearful of destroying something.
After your insistance that it must be a reversed cable, I tried again and this time was successful.
Thanks again, Chas
PS: This is the same system that would fire up for only a few seconds. We thought that maybe it was the processor cracked or bad. I changed enough components to new ones, trying to troubleshoot this machine, that I now have enough components to build another.
It is embarrassing to admit, but the problem turned out to be that I didn't hit the start switch.
When the fans and lights fired up and then quit, I thought there was a problem.
However, after changing each component,one by one, I for some reason decided to push the ON switch after it did it the last time. The machine came to life.
As you once told me, it is usually the simplest answer to a problem that is the correct one.
All is not lost, I am building another machine, soon, with all the spare components I have.

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by bob In reply to Floppy light stays on and ...

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