Floppy Drive Trouble - Data Error Reading Drive

[akm513]

I am in the process of rebuilding a socket 7 Pentium PC with parts I rescued from a recycling event. It was filthy and broken, but I've mostly brought it back to life.

My vision was to set it up with both 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch floppy drives. The 3.5 inch drive works fine, but I've been having lots of problems with the 5.25 inch drive. It's a Chinon FR-506.

Initially when I connected it, the activity light came on when I prompted it from DOS, but it gave me drive errors when trying to access the disk. I tried several cables and connectors and took it apart and cleaned it. When I reconnected it, it read disks great, but kept telling me disks were write protected, even though they weren't (I tried several disks). I took it apart to clean it again and cleaned the connectors too. I reconnected it, but now I'm back to drive errors again - DOS says "Data Error Reading Drive - Abort, Retry, Fail."

I'm completely at a loss. Is the drive dead? Did I kill it somehow? Is there something else I can do to revive it?

 

[modem7]

Welcome to these forums.

To be sure, confirm for us that your Pentium PC has support for 1.2M drives in its BIOS.

The FR-506 is terminated/unterminated per [here} ?

You have no other computers in which to test the drive ?

 

[Plasma]

Here is a guide for the jumper settings.

 

[SomeGuy]

What I would do is use a known good disk and run ImageDisk in alignment mode. Just manually seek the head back and forth a number of times and see if ImageDisk reliably finds sectors and tracks as it does so. In some cases, things might improve as the drive gets exercise. Keep an eye on the disk to make sure it isn't getting damaged as it runs.

Be sure to try different cables, to rule out any issue there.

The write protect issue could be a little trickier. Could just some dust that is really packed in to the sensor.

Also check that the disk is actually going in to the drive all the way correctly. If the frame is warped, or if there is any junk on whatever guides the disk in, that could cause odd issues including inability to see the write notch, even if the drive closes and spins the disk.

 

[akm513]

Thanks so much for the warm welcome!

To be sure, confirm for us that your Pentium PC has support for 1.2M drives in its BIOS.

Yes, it does confirm 1.2M drives. I have the original paper manual for the motherboard that talks about it. Further, I took the 1.2M drive out of my IBM AT to plug into this board and it will read and write just fine.

The FR-506 is terminated/unterminated per [here} ?

Yes, it is terminated just like in that image.


As I am writing this reply, it occurred to me that while I had tried the drive from my AT in the Pentium, I hadn't tried the Pentium drive in the AT. I did and it read and wrote no problem. Plugged it back into the Pentium machine and it now magically reads and writes no problem. I'm grateful that it is, but I am left scratching my head. Hopefully it stays that way, unless the Floppy Gremlin returns...

Thanks for the help and advice!