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Yet another floppy problem


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Here's a good one:

We have an XP PRO system (MSI mobo, P4) with two recognized floppy disk drives, A: 3.5, B: 5.25. When we boot to PC DOS 7.0 on the A: drive, it doesn't recognize the B: drive, but Anadisk, which we run from a ramdisk (C:) reads all the sectors, finds all of the formatting information, and lets us look at each sector, each file whether deleted or not, and the FAT. Why doesn't DOS recognize the B drive? Could it be the DS0, DS1, DS2, DS3 selector? Would XP recognize the drive if the DS selector was incorrect? Would Ananisk? Any ideas? We are using Anadisk because some of the diskettes are copy protected and some are CP/M and maybe Pascal P code. Anadisk also allows us to format the diskettes to erase all of the old data. And Anadisk doesn't run under XP.

Because we can read DOS flavored diskettes on XP, and because Anadisk can read the diskettes and because the drive worked on the machine from which we pulled it, we think the drive and cables are good. And the POST tickles both drives on boot up, too. TIA.

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Check carefully your BIOS configuration. If the drive B: is not activated in BIOS, Win XP may find it, and probably Anadisk too, but DOS won't. The BIOS may be finding the drive but not mounting it...

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Check carefully your BIOS configuration. If the drive B: is not activated in BIOS, Win XP may find it, and probably Anadisk too, but DOS won't. The BIOS may be finding the drive but not mounting it...

Thanks for the pointer. We will check this out on Friday when my sister and I get together. It's her computer and she's using it to read and capture the data on all of those 5.25 disks that she's collected over the years.

I see that you are a 9x/Me guru. I may need some help with that, too. But later.

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  • 2 months later...

We finally got to test: we replaced the diskette drive (a Chinon with a TEAC) and we replaced PC DOS 7 with the DOS from Windows 98SE.

The good news is that the DOS from Windows 98SE boots up. It seems the Mobo (an MSI 865PE Neo2 Version 1.1 MS-6728) doesn't like PC DOS 7. Windows 98SE DOS has a separate partition and uses FAT 16. That way we can copy data to the SE partition and read it from the XP partition. Except ---

Although Windows XP Pro still recognizes the floppy drive, the DOS from Windows 98SE does not either.

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BTW, are you really sure it *is* activated in the BIOS?

I bet it isn't (see the red arrows in the attached picture).

Try changing it to: 1.2 MB 5 1/4

Now, only in case it already is activated, then try adding a

DRIVPARM=/D:1 /C /F:1

statement to CONFIG.SYS

More info here

post-134642-12788314114_thumb.gif

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  • 1 month later...

BTW, are you really sure it *is* activated in the BIOS?

I bet it isn't (see the red arrows in the attached picture).

Try changing it to: 1.2 MB 5 1/4

Now, only in case it already is activated, then try adding a

DRIVPARM=/D:1 /C /F:1

statement to CONFIG.SYS

More info here

Thank you for your reply and your picture. You helped me confirm that we were on the right track.

Here's what we did:

We swapped the floppy drive and cable from a working XP & PC DOS 7 system (MSI-7005) which recognized the 5 1/4 drive (both were TEAC FD55-GFR, same jumpers) with out any change. The drive and cable from this system (MSI-6728) worked in the other system (MSI-7005). So it wasn't a floppy or cable problem. The BIOS indeed shows 5 1/4 1.2M drive as B: just like your picture. We tried Driver.sys and Drivparm, with the same results but different drive letters.

We solved our problem by installing 98SE on the partition. Good old 98SE recognizes both drives (like XP does) AND allows us to read the diskette at a low level using ANADISK. I'm still confused about why PC DOS 7 and MS DOS 7.1 (98SE) refused to recognize the diskette drive; I thought it must be that the driver was missing from the OS which is why we tried Driver.sys and Drivparm (under MS DOS 7.1). PC DOS 7 never would boot from the hard disk, but MS DOS 7.1 booted up just fine, although we still had the diskette drive issue.

The two systems differ in the model of their motherboards and in BIOS makers -- the one which always worked (MSI-7005) was Award, and the one which gave us fits (MSI-6728) was AMI BIOS. Perhaps something lurks in the BIOS which requires a Windows OS to work properly...

We still have some work to do -- We cannot run programs from the DOS prompt because the box has 1 GB.

But persistence paid off. Thanks to all, especially Dencorso.

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We still have some work to do -- We cannot run programs from the DOS prompt because the box has 1 GB.

Do you get the message: "There is not enough memory available to run this program."?

That's an easy one! Just install the FREE - Xeno86's modified VCACHE.VXD (direct download)

BTW, which driver.sys did you try?

Yes, that is exactly the message we get when we try to open the DOS prompt. I had seen that some entry/entries in the system.ini file would cure that message, but I've been unable to keep in my mind exactly what the entry/entries were. I work on this box about once per week, usually on Friday, trying to pound it into shape. Last week, we installed a wireless PCI card so my sister could access the internet through her home network. After getting both partitions to recognize the network and getting IE6 and Firefox, I tried to wake up the floppy drive. I expect to tackle this DOS memory issue later this week, Googling to find the required statements. You have simplified my task immensely. Much gratitude sir.

As for which Driver.sys, I cannot swear to it and having since loaded 98SE onto the partition, I may have overwritten what was there. I expect it was from the 98SE release. I'll see if I have the source for the MS DOS 7.1 that I loaded on the drive and the PC DOS 7 to see if Driver.sys resides on any of those. Do you think it's possible that I used a non-working version?

Regards to all

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... If the drive B: is not activated in BIOS, Win XP may find it, and probably Anadisk too, ...

I can confirm that AnaDisk completely bypasses the BIOS and accesses the FDC hardware directly. So if AnaDisk "sees" the drive, your drive and cable are good, but this won't detect misaligned or worn heads. If an AnaDisk "scan" of the floppy reads all the sectors, your drive heads and floppy are good too.

In Europe, we had three types of 5 1/4" double-sided drive: 360k, 720k and 1.2M.

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@draco: The tweak you had in mind consists in adding a "MaxFileCache=393216" (without the double inverted-commas) line under the section [VCache], both in SYSTEM.INI and in SYSTEM.CB, and if the [VCache] section does not already exist, one should create it. It is described in Q253912 - "Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed, although MS doesn't mention SYSTEM.CB (which is needed for Safe Mode) and suggests using MaxFileCache=524288 (which has been demonstrated by practice to be too much in many occasions). This is one approach that does work.

However, the (simpler and more elegant, IMO) altenative, which also works perfectly, is to install Xeno86's modified VCACHE.VXD, without ever having to edit either SYSTEM.INI or SYSTEM.CB.

I think MS-DOS 7.10 (the one underlying Win 98SE) doesn't actually have a driver.sys... However, the one from MS-DOS 6.22, after being patched to accept v. 7.10 should work OK. Without any patching, however, it will simply fail to install, giving a "Incorrect DOS version" message. That's why I mentioned DRIVPARM but did not talk about driver.sys. However, DRIVPARM should work only when the drive is correctly detected by the BIOS (it seems that's not exactly your case), while driver.sys should work regardless of what the BIOS thinks.

In Europe, we had three types of 5 1/4" double-sided drive: 360k, 720k and 1.2M.

Thanks for the info. :thumbup I had never heard about 5 1/4" double-sided 720k drives before. Were they common?

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  • 1 month later...

@draco: The tweak you had in mind consists in adding a "MaxFileCache=393216" (without the double inverted-commas) line under the section [VCache], both in SYSTEM.INI and in SYSTEM.CB, and if the [VCache] section does not already exist, one should create it. It is described in Q253912 - "Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed, although MS doesn't mention SYSTEM.CB (which is needed for Safe Mode) and suggests using MaxFileCache=524288 (which has been demonstrated by practice to be too much in many occasions). This is one approach that does work.

However, the (simpler and more elegant, IMO) altenative, which also works perfectly, is to install Xeno86's modified VCACHE.VXD, without ever having to edit either SYSTEM.INI or SYSTEM.CB.

I think MS-DOS 7.10 (the one underlying Win 98SE) doesn't actually have a driver.sys... However, the one from MS-DOS 6.22, after being patched to accept v. 7.10 should work OK. Without any patching, however, it will simply fail to install, giving a "Incorrect DOS version" message. That's why I mentioned DRIVPARM but did not talk about driver.sys. However, DRIVPARM should work only when the drive is correctly detected by the BIOS (it seems that's not exactly your case), while driver.sys should work regardless of what the BIOS thinks.

In Europe, we had three types of 5 1/4" double-sided drive: 360k, 720k and 1.2M.

Thanks for the info. :thumbup I had never heard about 5 1/4" double-sided 720k drives before. Were they common?

Here's the latest on this project: the modified vcache worked perfectly. Anadisk works in the 98SE environment, although it shows spurious sectors on the floppy diskettes; When Anadisk is asked to report on those sectors, they disappear. I regret that I did not confirm which version of driver.sys that I was using. I will need to check that later. As for now, everything is working well enough. We can reboot to 98SE when we need to analyze diskettes and we can read them using 98SE. We can copy them to the Fixed disk and prepare them for writing to CD-Rs. We can then reboot in XP and use our CD writing software.

What an interesting adventure! Thanks to all for your ideas, assistance and encouragement.

Kind Regards,

draco

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