Semi-OT: Has any interfaced a 360K floppy to a pentium-class PC?

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Mon Aug 19 18:38:01 2002

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Ross Archer wrote:
> Can't make my Toshiba 360K floppy drive work on my Athlon or
> P4 machine to save my life. I've tried every jumper setting
> I can think of on the drive. The best I get is a disk
> failure,
> where I try to access the drive, and the LED comes on and
> spins
> the disk for a while, then fails.

It is very likely that one or more people here can help with the problem,
but not until you provide some more information:
What model Toshiba 360K floppy?
What kind of motherboard/disk controller?
What operating system are you using?
When you say "try to access the drive", what EXACTLY are you
doing? (double clicking on an icon in "My computer"? typing DIR at a DOS
prompt? "ls"?, . . . )
Have you tried to FORMAT with it?
What kind of diskette is in the drive?
What was that diskette written with?
Does the drive work on other machines?
Does your computer work with other drives?
Do you have other drives in that machine? Do they still work when that
drive is connected?
When you say that you get a "disk failure", what is the EXACT wording of
the message? If that is a Windoze message, what message do you get at the
command prompt?

> Yes, I'm using the right cable. :) It has a 34 pin header
> plug
> (remember those?) that used to be standard on floppy cables
> all
> those years ago. Jameco still sells them. :)
> Yes, I set the BIOS to 360K. Still no dice.

All of the Toshiba 360K floppy drives that I can think of use a CARD-EDGE
connector, NOT a "header"

>
> Anybody have any clues as to what might be going wrong?
>
> Thanks, even if nobody has any ideas. :)
>
> -- Ross
Received on Mon Aug 19 2002 - 18:38:01 BST