Testbed woes

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inflater
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Testbed woes

Post by inflater »

Hey,
I've got a new testbed yesterday for free. It's an old Siemens-Nixdorf PCD-4ND laptop. Everything is working as it should (even battery, but it's lifespan is <5 minutes after fully charging.. but it's good for a machine more than 10 years old :)), until I checked the floppy drive. It doesn't read properly! :( When there's no floppy in drive and I would try to show contents of the floppy, the motor makes the "correct" noise of a medium not inserted (like on my main PC) and shows that the device isn't ready. If I would stick the floppy in, it makes a weird quiet noise, like if a broken dentist's drill is on, and it lasts for cca 15 seconds, until the OS shows that the device isn't ready.
But it seems I've achieved luck with one type of a floppy, it was a Fullmark HD, a bit fattier than the Verbatim ones (it had somewhat coarser floppy tag). When I tried to open the floppy in Windows, I've held the drive's eject button with small pressure - and voila, the floppy did show it's contents :shock:. I've kept trying it with other floppies, but no luck. So I tried this experiment later on and it seems that I've failed. :(

Any ideas how to fix this problem? As long I've newer owned/disassembled a laptop, please excuse me that I'm asking maybe a primitive question... Could I just buy a normal 3,5 FDD and place it there? Or it needs some special type? But I don't know how to even demount the drive off the laptop, I can't find the manuals for this notebook...

I would really appreciate your hints, because there's no way to test any OS'es or even transfer files to that PC (Maybe using a serial cable, but that wouldn't help much).

//EDIT:
Video showing the floppy drive:
http://portixos.xf.cz/data/MOV00003.3gp.MPG
The first time I didn't have the floppy inside the drive. :)

Again, thanks for any hints!
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inflater
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Post by inflater »

It's an "floppy disk drive pack". Hey great, Siemens-Nixdorf exists no more, where I could get one of these packs? :cry:

Well, I'ev got only two choices:
1. Buy a serial 9F/9F null modem cable and connect the PCs together. There will be no support of running hobby OSes on that testbed.
2. Disassemble the FDD and try to repair it (:lol: :lol:)...
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Post by Brynet-Inc »

Someone may have stuck something into the drive... a child or frustrated adult perhaps..

Other then that, perhaps it's not a 1.44MB floppy drive? that or someone might have messed around with the BIOS configuration.

I own quite a few old laptops like that... with the evil LCD ghosting.. etc..

EDIT: This help? http://www.pchub.com/uph/model/0--56-1/ ... parts.html ;)
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Post by inflater »

Brynet-Inc wrote:Other then that, perhaps it's not a 1.44MB floppy drive? that or someone might have messed around with the BIOS configuration.
The bios settings utility in that machine is very simple... it detects the drive as 1,44 MB 3,5" and the writing on back side of the "FDD pack" certifies that.

I have no idea if somebody stuck something in that drive but if I would deconnect it from the PC, I hear no foreign object when I shake the FDD a little. I think the head's down or something, unfortunately I don't have access for a slotted screwdriver that small (The screws inside are really small :()
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Post by Combuster »

Well if the floppy drive is broken, you're pretty much stuck. Unless you can manage to install GRUB without floppy, you are going to need some spare parts to operate it for OS development.

I quickly looked for the specs and they say it has a PCMCIA slot - If you can't find a new floppy drive you might try doing something with that. I do not know however how the BIOS would react if you try to get some bootable medium through that port. (Its truly ancient)
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Post by Dex »

I have lots of old laptops and one thing you can be sure of is they are very funny about what floppy disks you use.
The new floppy disks, you get now are very poor quality, try find a old floppy disk and try that.
If its broke, you can use com ports and test your OS by booting it from dos.
Also some of these have IR, you can get your code on that way.
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