Question Problem with 1.44MB floppy disk drive ?

[avz3]

First, let me give some background. I have quite an old software on 3 x 1.44 floppy diskettes that I want to copy to a cd rom or a flash drive. I've managed to find an old pc with an Asus P5GZ-MX motherboard.
I've connected to it a 1.44MB floppy drive with it's flat cable and I keep on getting this error:
"A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart".

I have 3 disk drives and 3 cables, I've replaced and installed each one of them with the same result.
Finally, I've disconnected the drive and disabled the 1.44 floppy drive option in the BIOS but surprisingly, the error message is still on. would like to ask for your opinion if there is a cure to it.

 

[BFG-9000]

The message is telling you that you have no bootable OS on any drive installed. You can either boot to DOS on a floppy, or install Windows to a HDD before trying to use the floppy drive.

While it's possible to load ATAPI and USB drivers for DOS if you know what you are doing, most people nowadays are probably better off doing the latter as they will be more familiar with a GUI.

 

[TerryLaze]

Also you can get external floppy drives that connect with usb to modern PCs and read the floppies that way.

 

[BFG-9000]

You could also live-boot a Linux distro from USB drive as it will support floppies too.

Not very many distros still support 32-bit though, and the board may not expose the Pentium 4's PAE flag so you may have to -forcepae if you use a i686 build. Apparently though AntiX and the related MX Linux do still have i486 versions and are lightweight enough to run OK on such an old PC.

 

[TerryLaze]

You could also live-boot a Linux distro from USB drive as it will support floppies too.

Not very many distros still support 32-bit though, and the board may not expose the Pentium 4's PAE flag so you may have to -forcepae if you use a i686 build. Apparently though AntiX and the related MX Linux do still have i486 versions and are lightweight enough to run OK on such an old PC.

The FreeDOS Project

www.freedos.org

 

[avz3]

The message is telling you that you have no bootable OS on any drive installed. You can either boot to DOS on a floppy, or install Windows to a HDD before trying to use the floppy drive.

While it's possible to load ATAPI and USB drivers for DOS if you know what you are doing, most people nowadays are probably better off doing the latter as they will be more familiar with a GUI.

 

[avz3]

Silly me, that was exactly the case. I forgot to connect an hdd. now the floppy drive is recognized but they seemed to be all faulty (they are from the junk and they are more then 25 y.o.) I've tried them with old 1.44 diskettes (not the ones with the software that I want to copy) inserting most of them produces a message that it has to be formatted, so I'm not risking to put in the sw diskettes. I'll try to find/buy a good conditioned drive.

 

[fzabkar]

I've tried them with old 1.44 diskettes (not the ones with the software that I want to copy) inserting most of them produces a message that it has to be formatted, ...

Maybe the diskettes are blank and have never been formatted?