Hello everyone and sorry for my bad english Now, I got a "Compaq Portable 486" with a monocrome display. Everyting was fine, but the fact that it was UNIX on it. I don't know nothing about that OS, so I formatted it and tried to install win95, although it's only 115Mb HD. Anyway, when I was trying with win95 and win98 bootdisc, the cd-rom driver which is SCSI, could not be identified. However I did install DOS 6.22 from 3 discs. I removed the harddrive and placed it in another computer thinking to install win95 and then put back drive, but I changed my mind rethinking that it was not good idea. I placed back harddrive. Now the problem is that my floppy stopped working. I checked connectors once, twice ... many times, even replaced floppy with another (same brand) and it still doesnot work. I have original Compaq configuration disc but, nothing. It sounds like that floppy is spinning and the light is on but it wont read the disc, any disc. I tried with several bootdiscs which I know are in good shape, but still...I even tried with EISA clear, which is similar to CMOS clear (I think) and started over, but I can't get that floppy work. This is maybe wrong forum, but I thought that peaple who has DOS problems has old machines and parhaps some time had ame or similar problem. I have another problem. I got DOS 5.0 in three zip-files. They are not image files så i need to extrct them to a: but what names (labels) should I give them. once again, forgive me for my bad english (I'm trying hard to express my self the right way) and if you think that this dont belong to this forum

I'd double check again all the cables. Make sure you didn't bend some pins putting the cables on; pin 1 is lined up with the colored stripe on the cable, etc. Also it may need to be cleaned. Is it sharing a power cable with another drive? I've had that happen where there wasn't enough power for the both of them.

Thanks for your answer SPOT. The floppy doesn't have separate power connector, it's two in one (data and power). I could get it work few times when I changed to A:, but then I typed DIR and got some strange "letters" or message "not right format", no metter what disc I tried with. Most of the time, if try to change to A:, I get message "drive A: not ready, abort, ignore, continue?" Please help if you have any ideas.

The only other things I can think of is that the CMOS is listing a different size for drive A than you have. The other is that there is something loose that is causing the intermittent operation. Might be time to replace the drive.

I've solved the problem. There are two ISA-slots, and on one of them were two pins in direct connection with each other. I fixed that and the floppy is working OK. Anyway, I am very relieved now thanks to SPOT who deserves credits for this one. It's his comments that indirectly made me search at right place. Thank you SPOT and thank you www.computing.net

Glad it worked out.