• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

I did something stupid (WD floppy/HD card).

T

Tincanalley

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 26, 2019
Messages
176
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Yes, it was stupid. I should have paid more attention.

I have a 286 clone machine with dual 1.2MB drives. I had them connected to a WD1003-WA2, but removed it as I had no MFM drives and wanted to install a controller that would handle IDE. I never got around to doing it and the other day got my hands on 2 MFM drives of questionable condition. So I reinstalled the WD controller and mindlessly connected the floppy cable and the MFM drive cables. I booted the machine and nothing went as expected and the floppy drive lights were on. I realized I put the cables on wrong. I reversed them and I cannot see the floppy drives anymore. I another floppy/IDE controller and I was able to access the drives, but the boot floppy was toast. I used another boot floppy and both drives are working fine. I reinstalled the WD and it still won't see the floppy drives. The HD grinds a bit and then the message about drive controller failure.

So, I can't trust the board to read the HDs correctly as I did something to fry it's ability to control the floppies as well as hose the floppy in the boot drive. Is this the end of the card? Did I kill and IC? Should I even attempt to fix it, or just toss it in a box and think of it sadly from time to time?

Thanks
 
On a standard clone, just connecting a drive cable backwards should not hurt anything. Are you sure you put everything the back the way it was before? Try it without the hard drive attached, if you have not already. Sometimes a faulty hard drive can inhibit proper floppy operation, although it is not supposed to.
 
SomeGuy said:
On a standard clone, just connecting a drive cable backwards should not hurt anything. Are you sure you put everything the back the way it was before? Try it without the hard drive attached, if you have not already. Sometimes a faulty hard drive can inhibit proper floppy operation, although it is not supposed to.
Click to expand...
Once I realized what I had done, I swapped the cables, but didn't connect the HD end. Then I tried it with the HD cables removed, same issue. I then tried a different floppy cable, same issue. I know it did something as the boot floppy is bad now. The boot floppy had booted several times just moments before I swapped IO cards, but not after connecting floppy cable to HD header. I also know the WD was working as I had it in the machine previously and the drives worked fine.
 
SomeGuy said:
On a standard clone, just connecting a drive cable backwards should not hurt anything. Are you sure you put everything the back the way it was before? Try it without the hard drive attached, if you have not already. Sometimes a faulty hard drive can inhibit proper floppy operation, although it is not supposed to.
Click to expand...
Oh, to be clear, I didn't put the cable on backwards, I put the floppy cable on the HD header.
 
the st506 control cable and floppy cables use a similar enough pinout with no voltage rails that by rights, nothing should have been damaged by swapping them
 
maxtherabbit said:
the st506 control cable and floppy cables use a similar enough pinout with no voltage rails that by rights, nothing should have been damaged by swapping them
Click to expand...
Well something happened as the floppy drives are no longer recognized on that controller, but are on another. It was working fine until I disconnected the cables and reconnected incorrectly and tried booting. Now no drives will show up on the floppy connector and the disk that was in the boot drive during the boot process is toast.

Maybe something was about to go wrong with the controller and I sped the process up.
 
Have you checked to see if your machine's BIOS settings are still set properly for the drives? (If the other card happened to have its own BIOS, it might magically work).

I'd still be much more inclined to think that there is something physically wrong rather than electrically. Perhaps you bent or broke a pin on the connector when things were plugged in wrong?

Perhaps quadruple check and see if the cable is really plugged in correctly now.

It would be worth trying a different cable. I've gone back and forth between multiple cards before trying to find a problem only to find that the cable had an intermittently bad connection.
 
SomeGuy said:
Have you checked to see if your machine's BIOS settings are still set properly for the drives? (If the other card happened to have its own BIOS, it might magically work).

I'd still be much more inclined to think that there is something physically wrong rather than electrically. Perhaps you bent or broke a pin on the connector when things were plugged in wrong?

Perhaps quadruple check and see if the cable is really plugged in correctly now.

It would be worth trying a different cable. I've gone back and forth between multiple cards before trying to find a problem only to find that the cable had an intermittently bad connection.
Click to expand...
Double checked the pins and tried 3 different cables. The drives work, with all cables, when connected to another controller, just not this one. The Phonix BIOS program (similar to the IBM AT) shows the two floppy drives as 1.2MB as originally set.

I think my next step will be trying some older 360K drives on the controller. Not that drive type should matter, but it's something to try. Maybe I'll also try just one of the 1.2 drives instead of 2.
 
Tincanalley said:
Well something happened as the floppy drives are no longer recognized on that controller, but are on another. It was working fine until I disconnected the cables and reconnected incorrectly and tried booting. Now no drives will show up on the floppy connector and the disk that was in the boot drive during the boot process is toast.

Maybe something was about to go wrong with the controller and I sped the process up.
Click to expand...
The disk being trashed makes sense. The write gate probably got opened on track 0.

And yes, it's possible the controller was on its last legs and you just pushed it over the edge.
 
maxtherabbit said:
The disk being trashed makes sense. The write gate probably got opened on track 0.

And yes, it's possible the controller was on its last legs and you just pushed it over the edge.
Click to expand...
I'm going with that. I find no physical reason the drives won't work on the card, so it has to be the card. I have another floppy/HD controller but it isn't of much use as it has early IDE support, but the machine's BIOS only has entries up to type 42. The BIOS doesn't support any drive close to the smallest IDE I have. 🤣
 
Sometimes with IDE drives you can get away with just selecting the largest drive type your BIOS supports and it’ll work well enough to at least give you that much of the disk. (Or to boot drive overlay software.) That strikes out on all your drives?
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Sometimes with IDE drives you can get away with just selecting the largest drive type your BIOS supports and it’ll work well enough to at least give you that much of the disk. (Or to boot drive overlay software.) That strikes out on all your drives?
Click to expand...
I do have a 320MB seagate IDE. So I should look for the drive type that provides the best size from that drive?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top