ATR8000 floppy drive problems

[ijor]

I'm sorry, I might have typed too much. "My" machine is about a year old and it's BIOS will definitely not recognize a 5.25 FDD. This is from Intel directly and the FDD cable may have changed configuration anyway, as there is a pin in that 3rd spot where there wasn't one on the old computers.

The older machine I am working on does recognize the drive, both in BIOS and My Computer, but it won't read anything from it, and on this machine it flip-flops between the 2 different error messages, even though it does spin up.

I hope there isn't anything wrong with the drive itself, as I said, it was in new condition when I found it.

 

I yet have to see a 5.25 drive doesn't work at all on a modern PC. There are different levels of problems/incompatibilities, and you need different solutions depending on the case.

 

In first place, there is no such a thing as a PC not detecting a 360K drive, or lacking support for 360K drives at the hardware level. A certain BIOS might not support 360K drive in the worst case, but this would be a limitation of the BIOS, not of the PC hardware. In either case, the BIOS should detect the drive regardless. BIOS doesn't auto-detect the type of drive, you specify the drive type manually. BIOS just detect if the drive is present or not, and pass the information (about being present, and which type as specified by the user) to the Operating System. You might have an issue of the wrong cable/connector, but there are cables and adapters widely available.

 

So in the worst case, Windows will mistakenly think you have a modern 1.4 MB drive instead. If it does, then you will have a few problems. One is the lack of the media-change signal, and then Windows will assume there is no disk in the drive. Other problem is that Windows will use the wrong step-rate. There are ways to cheat Windows and override the BIOS settings. But they are not simple at all.

 

One easier way to overcome BIOS limitations is to use Linux (or any open source OS for that matter). I think you can force the drive type on Linux.

 

I hear the drive spinning up, but nothing reads

 

The drive spins. But does the drive's led turn on or it doesn't?

 

If the led turns on and the drive spins, then you have a hardware problem. Probably the drive, but could be something else. If you have both this and a 3.5 drive connected, try removing the latter and see what happens.

 

If the led doesn't turn on, then you probably need to change the jumpers.

 

It might help to attempt accessing the drive with the drive outside the PC. Try to see if the stepper is moving or not. Sometimes the heads are too dirty and you need to clean them up.

 

I assume, of course, that the disks you are trying are known to be ok and are PC compatible. Aren't you trying to read Atari formatted disks, are you?