Clearing the office in preparation for the house move, I came across some floppies!
The current desktop Win 7 32 bit PC has a suitable slot so I plugged one in. No response of any sort:-( The little green light comes on occasionally so I am confident it has power.
However, no reference found in program accessories and does not display under *devices*.
If its enabled in the BIOS then drive a: should show in Windows Explorer regardless of whether the drive actually works just so long as a signal is detected in the POST on startup/reboot. If its enabled in the BIOS and no signal is detected as a result of the drive being totally dead, disconnected, whatever then it should show a message "Drive a: not detected/present" or similar on startup.
Just because power is connected to the drive doesn't mean that the ribbon cable is. You may have upgraded in the past and simply not bothered to plug the data cable in thinking 'why bother' ?
This PC is a refurbished educational Stone so it is quite possible the floppy was considered redundant.
We have a pending house move and it is quite possible *spaced Tim* will be called in to help get me back on line. If so, he can run through the bios? and possibly spot what is going on.
If it is ex-educational then there is a strong possibility that the floppy drives had their data cable unplugged or even cut to stop students trying to reboot with virus-laden floppies.
I wonder if the disconnected front panel button is 'Reset'? The only other button I can think of was the old 'Turbo' (Brake?) but that's not been used to *years*.
So, do you have a Reset button on that PC Tim (often near the power and sometimes recessed against accidental pressing (don't press it when the PC is on normally as a way of testing. Best boot into the BIOS and test it from there).
It could be that that particular diskette is faulty (though you probably tried more than one) or that the drive is but even if it was I'd expect it to show us as a drive on Windows. If the interface is enabled in the BIOS and the drive not disabled in same, it should appear under My Computer as a floppy drive symbol?
I should still have your old PC in the heap and if that has a floppy drive I can test it and put it in your current PC if required. ;-)
As mentioned elsewhere, USB / floppy drives aren't expensive but would be another thing to be kicking about.
Good luck with the move. If you hired a removals lorry you could just walk all your belongings though it to River Cottage. ;-)
In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, T i m snipped-for-privacy@spaced.me.uk> writes
There are 3 buttons all moderately recessed. They each have obscure (to me) symbols. The main stop/start has a backwards C and an inserted hyphen. A fully recessed button has a side view cylinder and the other a backwards circular arrow.
I wouldn't bother about the old XP drive. This one is close mounted with the CD drive and not easily got at.
I expect it is not called up in the bios so a look may solve the issue.
For £10.00 I can copy stuff and then throw the drive away.
A fair bit has moved already by fork lift truck and flat barrow:-)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.