You will need more then one cable to connect those devices. Floppys uses a 34pin connector and harddrives (ide) uses a 40 pin connector.

What hardware do you have except for the drives?

I have just the one hard drive connected to the motherboard and I have a nother slot on the motherboard for the 39 pin cable

You can connect both floppy drives to a 34 pin ribbon cable. The mainboard or floppy controller goes to one the of the cable that is not at the twist. The B: drive goes to a connector on the same side of the twist as the controller/mainboard. The A: drive goes to a connector after the twist. Oftentimes, these cables have connectors is both the 5.25" and the 3.5" shape where you would connect the drives. See this picture for reference: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/keirf/ … bmpc_ribbon.jpg .

You can connect the hard drive and the CD drive to the same 40-pin ribbon cable. In case there are two 40-pin plugs (maybe with pin 20 missing as key pin, making it "39 pins") on the motherboard, you can also connect the CD drive and the hard drive with different 40-pin ribbon cables. These 40-pin cables are usually called "IDE cables".

In no case, you can connect a CD drive and a standard floppy drive to the same ribbon cable. The only exception is if you have an IDE or ATAPI floppy drive like the LS-120 drive (which I don't think applies to your system). Even if your CD drive has a 34 pin connector like a floppy drive, it can not be connected to the same controller as a floppy drive - it would need a special 34-pin CD interface card instead.

Floppy drives need a different cable that the hard disks and the cdrom, this is obvious just by looking at the connectors. So,
-you will connect the 2 floppy drives to the new cable you bought. Post a photo of the cable and people will tell you where to connect them, not all floppy cables are the same Edit: mkarcher just posted a nice floppy cable photo
-you will connect the HDD and the cdrom on the same cable with a master-slave configuration, or if you have another cable and connector on the motherboard you can connect each one to their own cable. Again, photos and details are needed. There are many ways to accomplish what you want.

Thanks for all the info and pics showing of ribbon cable I didn’t realise you can’t connect cd rom with floppy drive on same cable

Just a reminder about drive jumpers... Both floppy drives need to be jumbered as B: (drive 2) the actual
logical A: or B: will be determined by the position on the cable (A: at the end away from the mainboard
after the twist, B: on the mainboard side of the twist) - Unless you got drives from somewhere where
they weren't used on PCs, they are probably already jumpered as B:)

If you put the IDE CD on the same cable as the hard drive, it needs to be jumpered as SLAVE.
if you put it on a separate cable to a second IDE connector, then it needs to be jumpered as
MASTER)

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

Hi have reconnected ribbon cable with the pin 1 into motherboard and pin 1 into both floppy drives
The lights on them are now off and only turn on when floppy drives are active but when both drives are active the lights turn on at same time instead of 1 and a other also it says floppy drives are not accessible
Even thoe both drives are showing up on screen in my computer screen I have also tried different settings in the bios

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 19:28:

Hi have reconnected ribbon cable with the pin 1 into motherboard and pin 1 into both floppy drives
The lights on them are now off and only turn on when floppy drives are active

That's actually great news.

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 19:28:

but when both drives are active the lights turn on at same time instead of 1 and a other also it says floppy drives are not accessible

But this is concerning. It shouldn't be that way. Do both drives turn on if you try to access A: and if you try to access B:, or only for one of the letters? Do the drives work if you only connect one of them at a time?

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 19:28:

Even thoe both drives are showing up on screen in my computer screen I have also tried different settings in the bios

What shows up on the screen is just what you set in the BIOS. There is no plug-and-play for floppy drive detection on standard IBM compatible PCs. So please don't read "the drive shows up" as "the drive is connected properly".

Hi both lights turn on when computer is testing the drives but when I click on a drive in my computer screen only the light turns on corosponding to the drive that I’ve clicked on in the past when
I only had 1 floppy connectored it was fine

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 20:16:

Hi both lights turn on when computer is testing the drives but when I click on a drive in my computer screen only the light turns on corosponding to the drive that I’ve clicked on in the past when
I only had 1 floppy connectored it was fine

Please do the following:

1. Turn off your computer.
2. Open the case.
3. Take at least one photo of your ribbon cable connecting the motherboard and two floppy drives. Better if you can provide detailed close-ups of each and every connection.
4. Attach the photo(s) in your reply.

Both drives lights do seem to turn on when I try to access one of the drives then I get a message saying drive is not accessible

Check that only one drive has the termination resistors pack installed - many 3.5s don't have an option and have less termination
- try reoveing it from the 5.25

You can do more serious testing with ImageDisk (from DavesOldComputers) - It has a Test/Analyze function which will
let you do/try a lot of low-level drive operations

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

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 20:49:

Both drives lights do seem to turn on when I try to access one of the drives then I get a message saying drive is not accessible

Sounds like both are getting selected at once.

Check the cable and jumpers as I described in a previous post.

Does both work if connceted by itself (one at a time)?

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

Hi I’ve noticed that even my dvd rom drive when i click on it it also gives the message drive inaccessible
As well and it definitely worked before i put in the floppy so I’m not sure what is going on it’s a real mystery

It sounds to me like the B drive is jumpered for drive A. This was not uncommon with onder 5.25 drives.

jude1977 wrote on 2024-09-08, 20:49:

Both drives lights do seem to turn on when I try to access one of the drives then I get a message saying drive is not accessible

Yes, yes we knew that already.
Having trouble connecting 2 floppy drives on one ribbon cable
Repeating your status again and again won't make your situation any better.

If you want others to assess your situation and provide you possible solutions, just open your case and show us your cable connections. Better with make and model of your motherboard and disk drives.

Keep everyone guessing won't help. Seriously.

Hi I’ve taken out the floppy drive and taken a few pictures of it I tried to take a picture of the jumper settings as someone replied to me the problem I’m having could be wrong jumper settings

The jumper seen on IMG_0200.jpeg is the drive select jumper - it tells the disk drive the condition that needs to be satisfied for the drive to react on the incoming signals. PC floppy drives are normally configured as DS1 (B:) so you would need to move it one position to the left to avoid the conflict with the other drive over the twist on the ribbon cable.

Like kmeaw said, the default position of that jumper is at DS1, while your current jumper is at DS0.

More info can be found with "5.25 INCH FLEXIBLE DISK DRIVE STANDARD SPECIFICATIONS M4854-347USA" and "M4854-347USA PCB NAMFM PARTS LOCATION DIAGRAM" at Bitsavers. Their efforts of digitizing and archiving those manuals and diagrams are magnificent.

The English text of that manual has a strong Japanese feel though. 😅