VOGONS


First post, by kelmer

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

My floppy drive was working fine and suddenly it stopped reading any disks? All disk throw the "retry, abort, failure" error on MS-DOS and just "couldnt read from the drive" on Windows.

Is it dead? Can it be fixed?

Reply 1 of 6, by rain

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Probably drive isnt bad , try another floppy disk.

-386-4MB-

Reply 2 of 6, by konc

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

What have you tried to troubleshoot? Start from the usual stuff: confirm drive declaration in BIOS is correct, reseat the I/O card if any, remove and re-connect the floppy cable, remove and re-connect the power connector, test with another floppy cable no matter how new it looks, test with another drive, test a disk on another computer, remove any new hardware you might have added lately, try to format a disk...

Reply 3 of 6, by kelmer

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Ok looks like i have a lot of fiddling to do! I didnt change anything it just straight up stopped working the other day when I put my SQ4 original floppy disk in... then all of a sudden no disks worked. Will try to plug/unplug.

Im using the disks to copy data from another computer so the disks do work fine when writing on them, just reading in this particular drive none of them work.

Reply 4 of 6, by konc

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ah then also check the SQ4 disk for visible/physical problems and try to format one disk on this drive.

Reply 5 of 6, by Joakim

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

If it stopped working just out of the blue maybe the heads are just dirty. I would take it apart and clean it with IPA very gently.

Reply 6 of 6, by kelmer

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Things I've tried:

* Changing the ribbon
* Changing the power cable
* Tried using my (original) prince of persia floppy, it displayed some files for a split second on windows, then threw a blue screen, then never read the floppy again.
* Formatting the floppy from the "damaged" drive, but it says the "size doesnt match the disk" no matter if I choose 1.44Mb or 720kb

I can read these floppies just fine using an external usb floppy drive on my (modern) windows laptop.