Floppy Drive Inop

[Garf]

I an unable to make my floppy drive work on my new computer with windows 7 64 bit. I know there is a card made in England named Catweasel that is supposed to do the job, but they are hard to come by. Are there any others?

 

[pbcopter]

What do you mean by you are unable to make it work?
Is it an internal Floppy drive?
Are you getting error messages?

 

[DeaconFrost]

If you honestly really need a floppy drive now, in 2012, get a USB one.

 

[mickey megabyte]

What do you mean by you are unable to make it work?
Is it an internal Ploppy drive?
Are you getting error messages?

:haha:

 

[pscowboy]

Get into your BIOS and check if the floppy is listed. You may have to enable it.
Also, in the peripherals section you have to enable the FDC, floppy drive controller.

If both of those are okay, open up the pc & disconnect the floppy cable and power connection from the floppy, then carefully reinsert.

Often, when working inside the pc, the power gets jostled. It's also real easy to plug in and miss one of the end male spikes.

If all of that is okay, your drive is toast.

 

[bigmck]

Just curious.....About two or three years ago, I went inside my case and took out the floppy and threw it away. I never used it. What do you use yours for that you could not use a CD burner for?

 

[Garf]

The drive in question is the old style internal drive. The motherboard I used didn't have a controller. I have an external unit. It works but it is SLOW. I need a floppy because I have a Sony Mavica FD-88 camera.

 

[pscowboy]

Would have been nice if you mentioned that you had the floppy in an external situation.

You could try an LS-120 Super Disk drive in a converted external IDE hard drive enclosure (you have to expose the floppy door). They are the same size as a 3.5" h/d. You will need a power adapter to accomodate the small 4-pin (not molex) connector.

These drives can be pinned to master; and they interface with an IDE connection. They read regular floppies, and are about 50 times faster than a normal floppy unit.

 

[Garf]

Is the LS-120 an Imation unit? Is it still being sold?

 

[pscowboy]

Yes and yes. They were the manufacturer.
I would suggest browsing ebay for "known good" items. Make sure the seller guarantees that they work.

You will also need a 4" 40-pin female to female IDE cable. The superdrive will have to be held away from the back some because the power connections are incompatible. Ergo, the reason for the adapter & ribbon.

That's okay though, because you need to open up the other end to expose the floppy door anyway. The nearer to the outside the better.

 

[Garf]

This is intended to go in the desktop case in place of the old floppy drive.

 

[pscowboy]

I thought you said your mobo did not have a FloppyDriveController?

If you can enable the FDC, just put the LS-120 in place of the floppy, pinned as slave & in second position on the IDE cable.

EDIT: Sorry! Don't need an FDC when one uses an LS-120. It works on an IDE channel.

 

[Garf]

The standard floppy drive was left in the case when I rebuilt the computer. I changed the motherboard, power supply, CD RW, etc. The new motherboard had no floppy controller, so it just sits there.

 

[pscowboy]

Swap it out for an LS-120.
I'm fairly certain it'll work because it's on an IDE channel, and W7 has no problem with IDE drives.
It just reports in as a floppy.

Unless you have two peripherals already on your one IDE?

 

[pscowboy]

I pulled my LS-120 from my XP machine; pinned it master and hooked it up to the Primary IDE channel on one of my Windows 7 pc's (sata drive is boot h/d in here).

W7 installed it in about 2 seconds, and was reported in as floppy disk drive A:
Inserted three diskettes, and read them all.

Garf, it works and will give you a chance to use floppies at very fast speeds.

 

[Britton30]

Hard to help without some more info.:huh:

 

[harmie]

MANY FOLKS LIKE MY DAUGHTER!- has stored vital pics of my grand baby stored on floppies, and never bothered to get them converted. Now I have drug out a old XP Dell 9150. However, I disabled the floppy a long time back and I can't get it to work nor show up on Devise Manager or My Computer or PC Wizard! I am going to try the bios next after reading this!
I bet there are a lot of old floppies around that people would like to have!

 

[pscowboy]

Your instinct is correct. Probably on the first page in the BIOS you can enable the floppy drive. Also look for a setting for FDC - floppy drive controller, and enable that too.