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Extremely weird floppy drive issue.....

C

coolie_d

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 1, 2004
Messages
2,586
I was wondering if anyone's ever heard of an issue such as the one I am experiencing at work. Can't be specific about make/model of computer, let's just say it's from a large OEM and is a BTX mid-tower Pentium D 930 system running on a Radeon Xpress200 motherboard. A whole shipment of these systems (200) have major floppy drive issues right out of the box. Data Error reading drive A: everytime I boot with any one of my netbootdisk.com boot floppies. Floppy drive in all of these systems is a Mitsumi drive MANUFACTURED IN CHINA (remember the all caps part, it will be important later on in the story)...... Now, I was curious, so I removed the drive from the tower, and hooked it back up..... In every single case, it booted just fine........ Soooo.... i'm thinking it's the data cable being routed too close to the processor or something, so I manage to use the cable harness to suspend the drive near the floppy bay in the same sort of orientation as it would normally be in.... again, boots fine..... pop the drive back in the bay, data errors all over the place..... so, I start thinking it's a grounding issue.... so, I ground the drive to the drivebay with a length of wire..... still boots fine...... so, i'm running out of ideas...... i go grab an identical Mitsumi floppy MANUFACTURED IN THE PHILLIPINES and slap it in there...... in all cases, works fine..... So, I go slap the CHINESE one into a similar Pentium 4 3.2GHz system with and identical case but running an Intel 915 motherboard..... well s^&t on a shingle, it works great....... okay.... WTF is going on? drive works in different system that uses the same case...... so it would appear that the CHINESE drive is somehow incompatible with that particular hardware combo, but only when installed in the case..... I have no idea what the hell the problem is, only that the solution is to replace all 200 drives with a Panasonic model (tested on 10 so far, 100% success!)....... And the only other reference to ANYTHING like this on the net refers to an IBM PC300GL but he never figured it out either and attributed it to a ghost inside his computer........ So, any ideas at all? Only thing I didn't try was all of the hardware inside of a different case, since I don't happen to have any BTX cases laying around that are any different....... and I don't think 200 cases could have a fatal flaw in them......

Edit: BTW, these cases all have 2 external 3.5 bays, and the drive behaves the same way in either bay (works on the 915G/Pentium 4 combo, not on the Radeon Xpress200/Pentium D combo)
 
did you try using a know good floppy cable with the drive in the bay ?

( I read your description twice but despite your good effort some things are not clear. you dangled it out of the bay on the existing cable and it works, run ground wire to bay with floppy dangling , it works. I am thinking the connector right were it plugs into the floppy is defective and when putting it in the bay causes a bend or stress right on the floppy connector that causes it to fail. probally wrong but becore I bought 200 floopies I would rather buy 200 floppy cables. Worth checking out. ) oh just saw where the other floopy worked ok in the bay, so the cable idea is iffy, but still worth a try if for some reason below wont work for you.

Of course I am wondering why you are messing with it after the initial determination that it was a wide spred problem. You can go thru and fix em all but noone will apprecaite it and if there is a warranty you might void it. I would be on the phone to the sales rep in a New York minute and tell them to get someone down to fix the damn things before I shipped them ALL the hell back and/or got on the phone to accounting telling them not to pay the invoice until the issue was resolved.
 
BillParrish, you're missing alot of the point..... an IDENTICAL (read exact same) drive made in a different country works fine (Phillipines).... the IDENTICAL drive from China does not work..... and I tried about 27 known good cables, there is no way I am going to void the warranty as that is not how it works with a large account such as ours where we have an onsite tech (me), it was my troubleshooting steps that I went through that lead me to determine exactly what the problem is, and what the solution is.... this is all in the works, done and over, 110% approved by top-tier tech support (already replaced 10 drives myself, got 190 more coming tomorrow and a tech from the manufacturer coming onsite to repair all 190 remaining machines -- no, this won't cost us anything, as our warranty is spectacular). I am just curious as to if anyone has ever seen this kind of peculiarity with a particular drive (or is it possible Mitsumi just had a bad production run)? I am asking more to satisfy my own curiosity as to what the root cause of the problem is, as it's been nagging me...
 
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