5.25" floppy drive

[Thomas Mueller]

from "Christoph Kukulies" <kuku at kukulies.org>:

> Thanks to all.

> Solved.

> It was a multiple cause issue:

> 1st: BIOS Setting was incorrect (had to enable 1.2MB 5.25 rather than 3.5 which was it set to - an oversight in the firts place, that occured to me).


> 2nd: Cable issue: I had a combined cable (3.5 " connector at the end and edge connector second but last.


> 3rd:  in combination with 2nd: DS0 jumper issue.


> Anyway, I found a cable that had two edge connectors.

> In the end it turns out that the floppies that were lying in a drawer for 19 years, are producing read errors.
> I also learnt about fdcontrol. Floppy interface has changed significantly since Joerg Wunsch and Bruce Evans
> worked on them in the early FreeBSD days back in 1995 :)


> --
> Christoph

Congratulations on solving your floppy problem, but I can understand your problems with floppies.  They've gone bad with age for me too.  I can read but not write, then I can't read and in most cases can't even reformat. 

FreeBSD installation sets structure (base.aa, base.ab, base.ac etc.) suggests that one could install from a big set of floppies, but there's no way I could get such a good set of floppies together.  I think my 5.25" floppies and drive hold out better than the 3.5" floppies and drives.


Tom