Odd problem with floppy drive...

[Guest Dominik Mann]

Yeah, you did not misread anything, I'm having trouble with my floppy drive. Here's the full story...After I did a complete hardware upgrade on my computer late last summer I had a bunch of PC parts laying around - including a MSI 6191 mainboard with an Athlon 700 CPU on it. Well, a short time ago I agreed with my dad to build him a second "work" computer from these parts. So I bought the hardware still needed and went to work. Assembly was not much of a problem, but when I switched the machine on for the first time I could observe the following.Having successfully installed Win 2000 Pro on my dad's new 'puter I was puzzled to see that there was no floppy drive to be found anywhere within Windows. I looked into the Device Manager - there was a "Standard Floppy Disk Controller" or something like that listed, but not the floppy drive itself.So I rebooted and entered the BIOS - strangely the floppy drive was correctly listed as a 3.5", 1.44 MB diskette drive under the letter A: there. After exiting the BIOS and rebooting the computer yet again I took a closer look at that "hardware list" that appears on every bootup - don't know if there is actually a term for it. Now things turned very strange. In this list there was no A: drive to be seen - however, the floppy drive was there, but as drive B:.Anyone have an idea what might be wrong here? As I said, the floppy drive was correctly recognized as drive A: in the BIOS, yet the bootup device list shows it as drive B: .Thanks!!!

[Guest]

Just for a grin, flip the cable on the floppy. In other words, pull it off the drive, turn the connector 180 degrees and reinsert.Let us know.bt

[Guest Dominik Mann]

That's exactly what I tried first, and it would seem that this is not the source of the problem. The odd thing is that the floppy drive is (obviously) recognized correctly in the BIOS, but I have a feeling that somewhere along the boot process something screws up. Tried replacing the new floppy drive I bought for this PC with one from an old P133 standing in the corner to see if the drive itself might be defective, but it did not change things.How about removing the floppy controller from the Windows configuration and reinstalling it afterwards? Could that be the problem?

[Guest DNelson]

You might try using a different connector on the floppy ribbon cable, or another cable. I don't recall from memory which connector goes to the A drive, but I *think* it's the connector at the end. A pair of wires in the cable are twisted between the middle and end connectors, and that's how the motherboard distinguishes the A drive and the B drive. In other words, the two connectors are not interchangeable; one is for the A drive only, and the other for the B drive only.Dan

[Guest]

OK...some questions:Can you boot the PC from a floppy?If so, when the PC is booted, which drive appears on the command line, A: or B:Have you tried another floppy drive by the way?Edit: Also, look in your bios, for an entry which says something about swap onboard FDC - A/B. See if that is set for swap.Cheers,bt