5.25" 1.2MB Floppy Drive not ready

[aoresteen]

I have a cute 386 SX computer with 16MB RAM. It has 4 floppies and a hard drive. Boots fine. All floppys work fine except the 3rd one. Its a 5.25" 1.2 MB floppy.

BIOS is set correctly. 4th flopy is a 360K and it works fine. A&B are 1.4MB flopppies they work fine as well.
Whenever I try to access it I get a "Drive not ready error". Can't read anything with it or format a floppy. Any ideas on how to fix it?

It's not been used since Jan 2007. CMOS battery was dead and I had to desolder it from the mother board. I have a Mac 3.6v battery cobbled up to it right now. It's keeping time and settings ok.

I tried DOS 3.3, 4, 5, and 6.2. Same error.

Thanks!

 

[Agent Orange]

When was the last time that you knew that it worked? Tell us the make of drive in question and, in the mean time, check the data cable, power, and jumpers.

 

[DOS lives on!!]

Does the light on it stay on all the time or only come on when the drive is being accessed? Have you tried another 1.2mb drive?

 

[billdeg]

What letter are you calling the drive? Do you have a conflict with the hard drive "C"

 

[aoresteen]

When was the last time that you knew that it worked? Tell us the make of drive in question and, in the mean time, check the data cable, power, and jumpers.

I'm traveling for the next couple of weeks so I can't look at the drive. It was last used say Dec 2006 or so. Checked cables all are good.

Does the light on it stay on all the time or only come on when the drive is being accessed? Have you tried another 1.2mb drive?

The light comes on only while being accessed and during POST. I don't have another 1.2 MB floppy to swap out.

What letter are you calling the drive? Do you have a conflict with the hard drive "C"

No conflict with the hard drive. Under DOS 3.3 the hard drive is Drive E. Under DOS 5 the hard drive is Drive C with the 360k being Drive D and the 1.2m being Drive E

Thanks!

 

[Chuck(G)]

Legacy floppy drives are incredibly simple-minded. Essentially the message means that a floppy access timed out. Usually, this means that the INDEX signal (pin 8 on the interface) isn't being seen. Since the drive-select LED comes on (and I assume that you can hear the disk spinning), that may mean nothing more than the LED/photo-transistor pair is too dirty for any light to pass. There are other possible causes, but I'd start by cleaning the drive.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

There are other possible causes, but I'd start by cleaning the drive.

Yep. I'd say the majority of issues I've ever had with 'modern' floppy drives have come down to simple things like fuzzballs stuck in the sensors.

 

[Chuck(G)]

A lot of folks don't realize it, but consider the manner in which most PC power supply fans are set up--always as an exhaust from the case. That means if you have 5¼" floppy or even some CD drives, the dirty, dusty air will be sucked in through the floppy drive slots, fouling the works. Not even the little shutter on most 3½" drives is sufficient to keep that from happening.

Now, go look at a industrial rack-mount PC case. It usually has a couple of fans set up in the front of the case that suck in air through a filter. Keeps the case at a positive pressure with respect to the exterior and floppy drive, CDs and components stay clean.

The common-sense approach would be to reverse the PSU fan--and I've done that on several systems that I have--and have fastened a filter over the PSU opening. If it's a semi-modern PC, the motherboard and BIOS monitor the interior temperature anyway, so there's no fear of thermal issues if the filter gets dirty.