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Formatting failure(s)

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DeltaDon

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Oct 26, 2016
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Dutchess County, New York, USA
I'm attempting to build a multi-floppy disk tower using a Gateway motherboard with a 133 MHZ Pentium CPU and a TexElect QuadFlop floppy disk controller. I have a CD/DVD drive and a 3.5" HDD on ATA channel 1 and the optical drive works and there's Windows 98 on the HDD. I can boot to Windows too. System also boots to DOS 6.22 from my 3.5" Drive A. I can read, write and format blank diskettes in drive A: too. So basic system functions as it should. I have the Gateway motherboard disk controller turned off in BIOS. The QuadFlop is the floppy controller that the floppy drives are connected to and it shows drive track info as they step. Note: I do have Drive A: and Drive B: turned on in BIOS settings or the floppy drives do not function. Gateway controller is off.

Drives are set as A=1.4 & B: =1.2. The QuadFlop setup is drive 0 = 1.4 & drive 1 = 1.2 both on the same drive cable. Drive 0 (1.4) is after the twist and 1 before the twist.

Problems arise when trying to use any 5.25" drive as drive B:.

Trying to format the 1.2 drive using Format B: /F:1.2 fails in the following manner. Drive LED lights and the heads load and there's six clunks (I counted them) from the drive stepping. However, each time formatting fails with a message: "Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable". I've tried five different 5.25" drives from four different brands. Several new or used diskettes have been used too. All five drives 1.2MB drives and fail in the same manner. I even tried to do a 360K format using Format B: /f:360 Same failure.

While it is possible my drives have failed in storage, I can't believe they all failed in the exact same way.

About the only thing I have not swapped out is the drive cable since I only have the one that has both 3.5" & 5.25" connectors. Since the 3.5" drive is on the end of tha cable and it works, I tend to belive that the cable is okay. But......

What am I doing wrong or what have forgotten about DOS machines?
 
Does the formatting work if the A and B drives are swapped? If so, I would suspect that the 5.25" drive has a terminator that shouldn't be there.

Does the Gateway floppy controller work on its own? Suspicion then would apply to Win9x not recognizing the QuadFlop correctly.
 
Does the Quadflop or the motherboard BIOS provide the drivers for talking to drive A and B?

If it's the motherboard bios then it might not work, at least if it's written for a motherboard floppy controller that lacks the select and motor signal for B:.

What happens if you connect the 1.2M drive as the third or fourth floppy on the quadflop?
 
The QuadFlop allows either the motherboard or itself to be in control. I've been using it as the controlling device, but I went back and tried the mobo too. I also made up a second cable and moved the 1.2MB 5.25 to that cable and put it on the second channel as physical drive 3, but logical 1 disk (or B:) drive. Same results. I've also tried putting the terminator resistor back into the drive plus changing the value of the QuadFlop's own terminator resistor. There's 3 differetnt value resistors included None of those changes mattered.

The 3.5" drive continues to work perfectly, but any of my several 5.25" fail. My next step I try will be to grab one of 1.2MB drives and try testing it with a greaseweazle. I am not a fan of the GW since I haven't played around with it much. If I can figure out the commands maybe I can see if the drive is working and therefore something I'm not getting right with the QuadFlop.

Failing back on using the motherboard's floppy controller, I believe, will limit me if I use 22Disk for burning CP/M format diskettes. I really want to be able to use the system for other than only drives as found on PC's Such as quad denisity DSDD (non-HD) drives and other CP/M 300 RPM drives.

But I'm pausing for the day to work on other things that also need some time. I might also try to get a second pair of eyeballs to look at my set up.
 
Maybe you need terminating resistors but with a different value?

I've never had any problems with this on a PC, but I remember that with an Amiga you had to remove the standard TTL 150 ohm pull-up resistors from a 5.25" drive and replace it with for example 1k or so. (I DIY:ed a terminator pack when fiddling with this back in the days)
 
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