[Avalon]

Hello - I have been trying for quite sometime now to get a computer started again. I have replaced the floppy drive, cables, etc with no positive outcome. There is no operating system on this machine right now either. Does anyone have any other ideas beside throwing it out the window? (that's about where I am now).

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Are you getting that floppy disk error (40) everytime you try & boot?
If so, check the following :

First, check the ribbon cable connections again. The red stripe on the cable denotes pin 1. On the motherboard, the floppy port should be marked with a number 1 at one end, so make sure pin1 lines up with this.
On the drive itself, if pin 1 isn't marked, then look for the missing pin - there will be 2 rows of 17 pins, but one pin should be missing at one end. This end will be the pin 1 end of the connector.

If the floppy drive light is lit up constantly whenever the system is powered on, then this indicates that the cable is connected incorrectly (ie pin 1 on cable is not matched to pin 1 on port)

Also, make sure that if one end of the ribbon cable has a twist in it, that the twisted end connects to the drive, not the motherboard.


Next, in the bios, make sure that the floppy drive is set to 3.5in 1.4MB option.
If you have an award/phoenix bios, there should be an entry in the first section to select the error conditions that the system will halt on - the common options for this setting are All errors/no errors/all but disk&key etc. If you have this option, try setting it to No errors.

If you still have a problem, try setting the floppy disk controller to DISABLED in the bios, set floppy to NONE in the bios & disconnect the floppy drive.

[Samm]

Are you getting that floppy disk error (40) everytime you try & boot?
If so, check the following :

First, check the ribbon cable connections again. The red stripe on the cable denotes pin 1. On the motherboard, the floppy port should be marked with a number 1 at one end, so make sure pin1 lines up with this.
On the drive itself, if pin 1 isn't marked, then look for the missing pin - there will be 2 rows of 17 pins, but one pin should be missing at one end. This end will be the pin 1 end of the connector.

If the floppy drive light is lit up constantly whenever the system is powered on, then this indicates that the cable is connected incorrectly (ie pin 1 on cable is not matched to pin 1 on port)

Also, make sure that if one end of the ribbon cable has a twist in it, that the twisted end connects to the drive, not the motherboard.


Next, in the bios, make sure that the floppy drive is set to 3.5in 1.4MB option.
If you have an award/phoenix bios, there should be an entry in the first section to select the error conditions that the system will halt on - the common options for this setting are All errors/no errors/all but disk&key etc. If you have this option, try setting it to No errors.

If you still have a problem, try setting the floppy disk controller to DISABLED in the bios, set floppy to NONE in the bios & disconnect the floppy drive.