Quoting Howard Sanner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


However, the other fly in the ointment is that the floppy drive stopped
working. This was a couple days after it had last been used to make an
MS-DOS boot floppy. I swapped in another drive, which worked long
enough to boot DOS twice. Then it stopped, too. So I don't know if it's
a cable or the disk controller (which is on the motherboard). I'm also
not really sure how to test it.

Given the flaky (to be charitable) floppy, I wonder if the problem is
the drive or the drive controller.

OK, the latest, delayed by a horrific couple of weeks at the office, is that the floppy ribbon cable had become unplugged from the motherboard. Duh.

Now the floppy spins, which is a step in the right direction. However, it cannot read or format diskettes. I tried under DOS and Linux. Under DOS I get an Int 0x24 error; trying to format a disk generates the message that track 0 is bad. Under Linux mount never returns and gives back the system prompt.

So something is still very wrong. Is there someplace in the Md. suburbs I can get a floppy ribbon cable? Does Radio Shack have that sort of thing? Or maybe Mark Electronics?

All suggestions gratefully received. It's times like this that I wish I had gotten "into" hardware.

Thanks.

BTW, if any of you are interested in associating a face with my moronic posts, I'll be recording Haydn's Nelson Mass at St. Andrew's Episcopal (the one behind the Md. Book Exchange) Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. It's a concert open to all. Free, but I've never been to a church concert yet where an offering wasn't taken, and I don't expect this one to be the first. Full disclosure: I'm not a member of the church, and I do the recordings pro bono; so I have no interest in their continued success. I'm the gray haired, overweight guy with a full beard and wire-rimmed glasses.

Howard Sanner
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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