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Adding a 3.5" Drive to a 5150

DDS said:
That would be the correct setup if you want the 3.5" drive to be B:. If you want it to be A: it needs to be on the end of the cable after the twist.
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That actually is what I want since I still want the ability to play 5.25" booters. The 3.5" drive is only for transferring files.
 
tempest said:
That actually is what I want since I still want the ability to play 5.25" booters. The 3.5" drive is only for transferring files.
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Either drive can play booters.

Either drive can boot a DOS floppy.

I use a disk with this on it:

'Boot-B:' which is a program that creates a new boot sector for a disk in drive A: which when booted will pass the boot process over to the B: drive.

I've been using this for years to simplify many floppy issues.

With this utility you can boot from A: or B: at will regardless of their size/format.
 
tempest said:
Not sure I follow what you're saying. It sounds like I need a cable like this:
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I think you missed the point. The cable I described will plug in to the cable you already have and make it compatible with the card edge connector on your floppy controller.
 
Ok I got my cable and I'm still having trouble. I use my DOS 5 boot disk to get to a DOS prompt, but when I tried to access the 3.5" drive (I have it as the B drive) both disk drive lights went on. I attempted to format the 3.5" and it seemed to think it was a 360K disk then said it couldn't read the boot sector. Do I have to configure something for the system to recognize the 3.5" drive as 720K? The motherboard is already set to two drives so that's no it.
 
Yeah I just read that. I had two problems:

1. I was using a 1.44MB disk (don't know how that snuck in my 720K pile)
2. I didn't have that drive enabled

I don't have a hard drive up and running at the moment, so my testing will have to wait until next week. I tried formatting a 720K disk on my DOS 6.22 box but I can't read it using DOS 5 (it says Sector Not Found). I assume this is because I formatted it in DOS 6 and not because the drive is bad. Interestingly when I tried format again (without the driver) it tried formatting it as a 360K disk but said Invalid Media Track 0 is Bad. I'm worried that my 3.5" drive may not be working, but I can't test that until I get my hard drive running.
 
DOS 6.22 should produce a disk that DOS 5 can read. FAT-16 stayed the same. So either one drive is out of alignment or dirty or something screwy is going on.
 
tempest said:
I was afraid of that. How do I diagnose this?
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I would try cleaning both drives first. Opening up and making sure the heads are still attached could save a lot of fruitless debugging. Checking for alignment is hard and the proper tools are long gone. I would try an expendable install diskette in 720kB format. Publishers likely will have close to perfect alignment so if a drive fails to read the install disk, that drive probably has major problems.

If not that, the issue is really complex and expect to be offered many incorrect solutions before anyone figures out what is wrong.
 
You want a drive (5.25") on the far end (A:) and only a 3.5" drive on the middle (B:). Only one drive light should be lit at any one time. You can use a 1.44M drive if you have to. To get an easy 720K from a pile of 1.44M disks, cover over (with opaque tape or label, the density indicator hole.

Both drives should be set to the second drive select. (sometimes DS1; sometimes DS2, depending on how the manufacturer counts).

If both drive lights come on immediately on power-up, you've got one connector of the cable turned upside-down somewhere. (note the the "twist" is closest to the pin 1/2 edge.)
 
That's how I have the cable connected. The drive light issue only happened once, no idea why but it seems to have gone away.

How do you set the drive select? Jumpers? Maybe that's the problem?
 
It's the darn floppy drive. Plugged another one in and it works like a charm.
 
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Floppy drive faceplates vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. They're not interchangeable. Some use a couple of screws, other have tabs molded into the faceplate that snap into slots in the drive body.
 
Yeah I just noticed that the one on my black drive has side snaps where the one on the beige drive has top and bottom snaps. Looks like I'll just have to snag a new black one off ebay or deal with the horrors of a beige drive in a black case (nooooooo!).
 
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