Floppies are crazy...

[Guest]

I'd like to get some help: i bought a new motherboard and after installing it i couldnt access my floppy drive. ive already tried to change the floppywires with the ones from my cousin's computer and i've even already tried with his own floppy drive. in Win98 i access the floppy from Explorer but the names of the files are like: $g?11#~a.j|&
and i cant do nothing with them i cannot even format the disket. in win2k its always telling me that the disk in the drive isnt formatted and asks to format it but when its end formatting it says that the format couldnt have been complete. i'd appreciate some help, really!

 

[jclw]

Hmmmm... Never seen that before. Apart from the usual stuff (check the cables and BIOS settings) I can't think of much. Does your drive work in your friends computer?

Side note: Why are we still using 1.4MB 3.5" floppys? They have got to be 10 years old now. In the age of 100MB/250MB Zip disks and 120MB LS-120 drives it seems rather silly to ship every new computer with a 1.4MB drive.

Anyway, sorry to go off on a tangent but that always bugs me.

- JW

 

[Guest]

In Win95, I've seen a couple of strange floppy problems solved by going into System Properties|Device Manager, then deleting the floppy disk AND the floppy disk controller...and then restart Windows.

Mike

 

[Crashman]

Are you sure the cable is on right? I have personaly hooked them up one set of pins off, one row off, and even one power pin off during "blind" intallations. BTW the red strip goes opposite of the normal hard drive direction.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Its because theyre cheap, when zips are that cheap they will be in every sys too

 

[Fa1c0n]

Also because of compatibility. If you can't use a boot disk, it's a baaaad deal.


<b><font color=green> Have a day </font color=green></b>

 

[jclw]

How often does the general user need to boot off a floppy? You can boot off nearly any ATAPI/IDE or SCSI drive and most new OSes install off a CD. My newest computer doesn't have a floppy drive and it's never been a problem for me. Not that I really care if people have floppy drives or not, it just seems silly.

- JW

 

[Crashman]

I'm a tech, and I would like to ditch the floppy, but I need to make disk for the computers I work on


Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Do you guys know a floppy drive from Caleb which is IDE and uses 144 Mb floppies as well as normal ones?
if you know it please tell if it is worth or not.

 

[Crashman]

I only know of Superdisk, which uses 120MB disk and regular floppies on an IDE interface. They are made by several manufacturers. Unfortunately, they were unable to displace the Zip in the marketplace because of Zip's strong had already filled a sizable portion and nobody wanted to switch to the new standard.

Suicide is painless...........