bozimmerman
Experienced Member
Hello all,
I'm not an expert on olde PCs, so please bear with me.
I have two old 386s.
One works fine, has a couple of floppy drives, and a hard drive, and it's happy, but it's a 386sx, so its best isn't great.
The other is a 386dx with a math coprocessor and a tower case. So cool! It too has a hard drive and boots fine from it.
But to save my freaking flipping no good life I can not get this darned thing to read a floppy disk.
I gave up on the onboard floppy controller awhile ago. "Drive seek error on 1" at boot and no recognition at all from DOS.
However, since then I've tried IO/cards of various shapes and sizes, SCSI cards with floppy controllers, and even a sound card or two. But in all of those cases, after booting to DOS from the hard drive, it simply can not read the disk in the drive. Trying to pull a directory gets me lots of spinning action and eventual failure.
Before you ask, I know the 3.5" HD floppy drive works. I've tested it in the 386sx I mentioned before. In fact, whenever I feel suspicious, I test it again. And it is still fine in there.
Is there some floppy controller magic I need to understand?
If it matters, the 386sx is a Commodore PC50-II, and the troublesome 386dx is a Commodore PC60-III.
Thanks for any advice. I mess with this computer at least once a year, cry a lot, and then put it away. I'd sure like some resolution.
- Bo
I'm not an expert on olde PCs, so please bear with me.
I have two old 386s.
One works fine, has a couple of floppy drives, and a hard drive, and it's happy, but it's a 386sx, so its best isn't great.
The other is a 386dx with a math coprocessor and a tower case. So cool! It too has a hard drive and boots fine from it.
But to save my freaking flipping no good life I can not get this darned thing to read a floppy disk.
I gave up on the onboard floppy controller awhile ago. "Drive seek error on 1" at boot and no recognition at all from DOS.
However, since then I've tried IO/cards of various shapes and sizes, SCSI cards with floppy controllers, and even a sound card or two. But in all of those cases, after booting to DOS from the hard drive, it simply can not read the disk in the drive. Trying to pull a directory gets me lots of spinning action and eventual failure.
Before you ask, I know the 3.5" HD floppy drive works. I've tested it in the 386sx I mentioned before. In fact, whenever I feel suspicious, I test it again. And it is still fine in there.
Is there some floppy controller magic I need to understand?
If it matters, the 386sx is a Commodore PC50-II, and the troublesome 386dx is a Commodore PC60-III.
Thanks for any advice. I mess with this computer at least once a year, cry a lot, and then put it away. I'd sure like some resolution.
- Bo
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