🚀 go-pugleaf

EGDN97C@prodigy.com (Joe Jakubiak) writes:
>It seems to work fine except my 3.5 floppy will only read the
>1st disk placed in it.  If I change disks it still lists the contents of
>the 1st one.  The only way to get it to read a new disk is to reboot the
>computer but then it only reads one disk again, no more.

Or, if you try to save anything to that second disk ... all files are lost!

This is probably the second most common question asked on this group. There
have been a couple of solutions much cheaper than replacing the drive.  A
common cause is that the disk-change sensor line is broken; perhaps a poor
connector pin or a broken wire in the ribbon cable.  You might have loosened
a connector while fiddling around with the cables, or strained it and broken
one of the fine stranded conductors.  First, try wriggling the ribbon
connector to see if that fixes the problem.  If not, then ...

1) as a temporary measure, type ctrl-C in DOS at the A:/> prompt after you
   insert each new disc; this clears the directory buffer and forces DOS to
   look anew at the disk, or

2) when you eventually tire of (1) try substituting a different (or new)
   ribbon cable to that drive, and see if that restores correct operation, or

3) try the suggestion in comp.os.msdos.misc by aschwalb@atl.ge.com
   (Andrew Schwalb) who elaborated:
  >Although you may have a broken cable, it may also be a controller card
  >failure.  Pin 34 is indeed the disk change indicator line.  Also many 3.5"
  >floppy adapters have a jumper on them that enables or disables pin 34. The
  >adaptor is the edge connector to dual header pin connector.  (on the back
  >of the 3.5 floppy).

   So, if this problem has always been characteristic of your machine, then
   it could be that the jumper has never been correctly set.  But if you
   decide to play around there, make a note of where the jumpers are before
   you move any so you can later restore its original state, if need be.

4) Or, short of fixing the problem you could render it ineffectual by
   instructing DOS not to place any reliance on the disk change line - so
   that it must read the disk anew each time you type DIR, etc.  If you are
   using DRIVER.SYS in your config.sys file to config this floppy drive, then
   experiment with the /C parameter which tells DOS whether or not to rely on
   the disk change indicator line.  If you are not already using DRIVER.SYS,
   then instead you could choose to just add a DRIVPARM=  line to your
   config.sys file to override the default device settings for that floppy
   drive. Experiment with DRIVPARM's /C parameter, as it operates exactly as
   does the /C parameter for DRIVER.SYS.

   e.g., for 1.2M  A: drive use DRIVPARM=/d:0 /c /f:1 /h:2 /s:15 /t:80

5) I have no idea how this program is used, but if desperate have a look...
   ftp oak.oakland.edu /SimTel/msdos/diskutil/
   pdrive.zip   1491  910810  Protect against floppy disk change. Reread FAT
--
John Savage               koala@sydney.dialix.com.au