5.25 Floppy Drive Problem

[Wedgey]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Murray and I have a problem with my dads olde worlde computere

He had a pc (IBM PS1?) since 1982 from memory.

Machine was working fine until last year when it would not boot up - being a bit of a techie I managed to salvage the conents of the hard drive so we chucked the pc (Burninn smell inside case so obviosuly something had died)

The main contents on this machine were wordstar files from his old business.

He has around 50 5.25 floppy discs that while do not contain any real important information it would be cool to get them read/backed up/disposed off (to free up space)

I tried to hook up the salvaged 5.25 floppy to an old XP system = XP did not like it.

Created a Windows 98 SE machine = Drive would not respond (Assumed I had killed the drive whilst setting it up)

Purchased a TEAC FD55 from ebay (Link: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180288113693&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:UK:31 )

Hooked her up and the light comes on / turntable spins but the device that reads the floppy appers to be stuck - comes out about 1cm stops - makes noise - tries again - happens around 5 times.

Windows says it cant read drive A:

Bios is set up for a 5.25 - windows explorer shows it - double clicking on the drive sets the drive active but the reader appears to be stuck.

I have spent around 2 weeks trawling the net and trying things.

Cable appears to be correctly set up.

Ideally I would like to get them read using this floppy drive - failing that I guess I would be on the look out for a entire vintage computer.

Files are business related so assume pops wouldnt want anyone else to have them as such.

Any input would be superb - I am a bit out of my depth with Windows 3.1 :mrgreen:

Take bad not having a start button...

Best wishes,

Murray

 

[per]

Hooked her up and the light comes on / turntable spins but the device that reads the floppy appers to be stuck - comes out about 1cm stops - makes noise - tries again - happens around 5 times.

Try to have a drop of bike oil on the spindle motor and then drive it manually with the hand for a short time (remember do it with both sides).

 

[MikeS]

Hmm, I wouldn't put any oil on the motor; if it needs any cleaning/oiling at all it would be on the rails that guide the head, but since the ad said it was tested and working I'd start by assuming it's a configuration problem or even a bad disk. Stepping back and forth on the first track(s) is normal when it's having trouble reading the disk for any reason and doesn't mean that the head is mechanically stuck.

There are many variations of the FD55 and I'm not familiar with that particular one, but the first thing I'd suggest is that you check the BIOS to make sure it is set for a 1.2M HD drive, and I would try the switch in the 80 position (even though you're trying to read 40 track DD disks). The important thing is to match the BIOS to the *drive* specs; the OS will figure out what kind of disk it is (when reading).

If you have a spare DD disk you could try formatting it and see what happens; use the format *command* with the /4 or /F:360 option.

BTW, you did say this is a W98SE system? Why the reference to 3.1?

Good luck; as you'll read elsewhere reading old disks on newish machines can be a lot of fun, but you should not have too much trouble with W98SE and an FD55, assuming the drive (and your diskettes) are really OK.

m