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5 1/4" Floppy Drive Not Reading?

CuriousMarc said:
Did you ever solve your 5-1/4" drive problem? I have a very similar condition with my Chinon FR-506. It's a 1.2 MB drive. It's recognized by BIOS as a B: drive, the heads wiggle and the LED comes on startup for a short while, which makes me think it's hooked up mostly correctly.
Click to expand...

Maybe not clever, but the manual always helps. :)

For PC AT operation, all pin positions open, but for the following: 3 6 10 13. If the drive is used alone, also jumper 1 (TERM).
 
Chuck(G) said:
Maybe not clever, but the manual always helps. :)

For PC AT operation, all pin positions open, but for the following: 3 6 10 13. If the drive is used alone, also jumper 1 (TERM).
Click to expand...

Ah thanks a lot, almost! I could never find a manual for one, because I googled FR-506 which is my drive. Not FZ-506. But unfortunately the jumpers are different on the two models. That said, this moves the ball forward a big step, maybe by cross referencing mine to the FZ manual you gave I can get somewhere. So here it goes.

Your manual has a cryptic configuration table on p. 20. No jumper pin labels. It does not clearly explain the function of the pins, just shows 4 configs. But from another post which reports the jumper labels on the device (http://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/chinon-5-25-floppy-fz-506-jumpers.1942441/) and the configurations in the table I gathered the following:

Chinon FZ-506 jumpers labels and probable function
1- TM (termination resistors)
2- DS0 (drive select 0)
3- DS1
4- DS2
5- DS3
6- UI (? always jumpered in the examples of the manual)
7- HL (? never jumpered in the examples of the manual)
8- LH (8 to 11, speed and density choices, unclear which does what)
9- LH
10- MS
11- not MS
12- RDY (manual note only says READY)
13- DKC (manual note only says DISK CHANGE)

My jumpers (Chinon FR-506):
1- TM (termination resistors)
2- DS0 (drive select 0)
3- DS1
4- DS2
5- DS3
6- UI
7- MS1
8- D-R
9- MS2

Now I just have to find from that info and experiment what IU, D-R, MS1 and MS2 mean on my drive ...
 
Some progress. To eliminate termination issues, I disconnected my 3.5 A: drive, reconfigured the 5.25 Chinon as DS0 (A: device) and jumpered the TERM on. It got recognized by the BIOS and OS as the A: drive. Now when I try to format it under Win98 the LED light comes on, the head moves, but it still reports "There is no disk in drive or the drive door is open". No motor control from the PC either (it's on as soon as the door is closed).
So I gather a Drive Ready jumper and a Motor Control jumper not set right most probably.
 
Things started to make a lot more sense when I jumpered IU and RDY, but I think I have a bad drive.

Good things:
- disc drive is recognized, it does the head seek to check track count under BIOS at boot up, LED lights up as it should and then goes off.
- the disc spinning all the time was me inserting the diskette the wrong way (duh!). If I put it in with the correct way (notch and sector hole on the left side), it spins up for a short while at insertion and then stops as it should.
- with IU and RDY jumpered, it reports correctly that the disk is Not Ready when not inserted, if I try a read or a format operation.

Bad things:
- When I insert the disk and do a format or read, the disc does not spin up as it should. The LED lights up, the head goes to seek the first track, but the disk stays still, and nothing happens. OS stays locked up, LED on, head on first track until I take the disc out, at which point it reports (correctly) that there is not disc (disc not ready).

I tried to clean up the drive, which wasn't very dirty to start with, paying attention to all the optical sensors. Nope. I tried all the MS1-MS2 jumper configurations. Not helping, same symptoms. I think the drive is receiving the commands, sending them back properly, the head works, but the drive main motor is not reacting as it should. Smells like a drive fault rather than anything to do with the computer or jumpers.

Any other ideas?

Marc
 
Solved it. The last bit was the motor thing and it is a tricky one. I had a straight cable and was jumpered as A: (DS0). Then a thought went in my mind - wait, when they do a twist in the cable to switch a B: (DS1) to and A:, they also twist the motor control. Aha.

So instead I tried a twisted cable, and re-jumpered it for DS1 (as a B: on a straight cable). And sure enough, it showed up as an A:, and now the motor works!
I was just able to read correctly an old 360k disk. I failed to format another one, but that maybe more jumper twisting. Making progress (after 8 hours of trying!).

Marc
 
I can't edit my post above, but I found the meaning of the jumpers above:
- IU is In Use. Says this changes under what conditions the front LED is lit. On my unit, it seems to only work if this was jumpered, so it may be doing more than just that.
- D-R: Disk Ready vs. Disk Change reporting. For some reason PCs want Disk Ready indication, this needs to be jumpered.
- MS1 and MS2 are probably dual speed things, but I couldn't figure it exactly. It worked reading and formatting 360k floppies when jumpered to MS1.
 
Another weird thing happened in Win98 when I tried to put two Floppies (original 3.5" floppy as A: and the 5.25" as B:). The BIOS would recognize my two drives correctly, but the OS would only recognize one of the two. In order to clear that, I had to reboot once with the BIOS settings for floppies set to none, all the way to Win98 (which showed no floppies). Then reboot with the correct BIOS setting (3.5" on A and 5.25" on B), now Windows 98 would show the two drives. Go figure.
 
I am having a similar problem with a Windows 95 Packard Bell machine. The 5.25 drive is connected as the A: drive but does not read disks. Same error as OP. Its a shame because it used to work just fine! I will take a look at the twist cable to make sure later, but taking apart that PB machine is an ass-pain. :/
 
On high-density drives (1.2 and 1.44), PC's expect 'Disk change" . On 360 and 720, they ignore pin 34.

So you weren't even using standard PC floppy cables? You might have mentioned that ahead of time. On a PC all floppies are DS1--the "twist" in the cable handles motor and drive select swaps for A and B.
 
CalculatorLab said:
I am having a similar problem with a Windows 95 Packard Bell machine. The 5.25 drive is connected as the A: drive but does not read disks. Same error as OP. Its a shame because it used to work just fine! I will take a look at the twist cable to make sure later, but taking apart that PB machine is an ass-pain. :/
Click to expand...
Have you tried cleaning the heads? It's easy and can save lots of unnecessary work.
 
I sure can try that! I will google a tutorial later. I did check the IDE cable and it was fine, but still "the device is not ready".
 
Well, I cleaned the heads with some Q-tips and alcohol. Also removed a lot of dust from it too. It works now! I formatted a 3M disk in Windows 95 with it and it works! Now I can actually copy over some Tandy 1000 games and play them!
 
You should really invest in a disk drive head cleaning kit. Everybody here should. It's automatic and simple. And, you'll likely find that if you have disks that foul the heads once they will invariably foul the heads again, and again and ... Seriously it a wise move. I've had both kits on hand for 25 years and it's saved me tons of unnecessary work.
 
Stone said:
You should really invest in a disk drive head cleaning kit. Everybody here should. It's automatic and simple. And, you'll likely find that if you have disks that foul the heads once they will invariably foul the heads again, and again and ... Seriously it a wise move. I've had both kits on hand for 25 years and it's saved me tons of unnecessary work.
Click to expand...

Agreed, although opening a drive for more work once every ~10 years is inevitable. Sometimes there is more gunk than a felt wafer can clean off.

The trick nowadays is: Where to find drive cleaning kits? Isopropyl alcohol is easy, but the fake floppies show up on ebay rarely... wait, never mind, just checked ebay, there are at least 10 kits available. There's even a guy selling 8" NIB kits, nice.
 
Trixter said:
Agreed, although opening a drive for more work once every ~10 years is inevitable. Sometimes there is more gunk than a felt wafer can clean off.
Click to expand...
I don't seem to have encountered that situation. I have never had to open a floppy drive. I've always had 100% success with the drive cleaning kit. And I've used it (them) hundreds of times over the years. I swear by them. I don't know what today's cleaning diskettes are made of but mine are 20+ years old and they are certainly *not* felt. :) They're definitely abrasive, though.
 
Chuck(G) said:
On high-density drives (1.2 and 1.44), PC's expect 'Disk change" . On 360 and 720, they ignore pin 34.

So you weren't even using standard PC floppy cables? You might have mentioned that ahead of time. On a PC all floppies are DS1--the "twist" in the cable handles motor and drive select swaps for A and B.
Click to expand...

No. These are absolutely standard Floppy cables. I have some with twists and some without. I just thought it should have worked if it were jumpered as A: and on a straight cable. Actually the original 3.5" drive that was on that PC was jumpered as A: and with a straight cable, hence my trying the configuration using the original straight cabling first. But with this 5.25" obviously not. Which makes sense in retrospect ;-).

Now I have another problem. It reads, but doesn't write, nor formats. Actually it tries to do it, the head goes through the motions, but apparently nothing is written. Anyone ever had that problem?
 
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Could be the cable. Put a logic probe or scope on pin 24 at the drive end of the cable and then watch for the transition from high (+5 or thereabouts) to low (0 or thereabouts). You should see it when the FDC tries to write. If you do a FORMAT, the length of time will be greatest, since FORMAT tries to write from index to index. If you see the transition at the drive; it's the drive--otherwise, check at the motherboard/FDC end. If it says high there, you've got issues with the motherboard/FDC.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Could be the cable. Put a logic probe or scope on pin 24 at the drive end of the cable and then watch for the transition from high (+5 or thereabouts) to low (0 or thereabouts). You should see it when the FDC tries to write. If you do a FORMAT, the length of time will be greatest, since FORMAT tries to write from index to index. If you see the transition at the drive; it's the drive--otherwise, check at the motherboard/FDC end. If it says high there, you've got issues with the motherboard/FDC.
Click to expand...

Yes agree, I'll try that next.
 
And very annoyingly, signals look good when probing right at the floppy connector. Bottom green is the gate write signal, top yellow is the data write signal, trying to format a sector. Bad drive?

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