[Coco] Running 5.25" drives with Win 2000

[Mike Pepe]

Bruce W. Calkins wrote:
> Well, I can see the main board having issues. From faulty design to simple 
> static discharge.  Finding the acual problem might be a challenge.  It is 
> sounding outsice of my skill set for sure.  I have one machine that I have 
> loaded Windows 98 close to a dozen times.  The install goes south in 
> minutes, often before the drivers can be loaded, and / or before updates 
> installed.  I gave up when it took to LINUX line a duck to water.
> 
> Bruce W.
> 

There are any number of issues that would cause floppy drive issues you 
describe. NTFS is a filesystem structure, it has nothing to do with the 
physical block device.

The floppy controller may expect a transition of the disk change line to 
happen (or not happen). PC drives have a way of indicating whether the 
user opened/ejected the drive and changed it (it was one of the things 
that made DOS floppy access so much faster, since it didn't need to 
verify that the disk it was using every time.) Older drives may not have 
this feature, or it may not be working, thus the PC thinks the disk 
isn't inserted or is constantly changing.

Termination is another issue. 3.5 and 5.25 drives have drastically 
different electrical characteristics on their respective busses. Ideally 
the 5.25 drive should be the last on the cable and it should be 
terminated. It is technically possible, although unlikely, that the 
floppy controller's termination or drive characteristics are broken or 
not up to the task of driving the much heavier electrical load of the 
5.25's terminator.

Of course there may be software issues with the BIOS or Windows as well, 
or something is just broken.

I've used 5.25 drives on Windows machines of around that vintage, and 
they worked. (1.2M)

-Mike