hi i've just built a new machine (ive done it plenty of times), but i can't figure out why my floppy disk drive is not working! i have an ASUS P4S8X-MX mainboard, and i'm trying to make a RAID driver disk, and it says that it cannot access it. when i boot into DOS (let's say from a windows 98 or freedos disc) it cannot format the disc or access it either! a sooner response would be very much appreciated! help! Toshiba M50-MX2: Celeron M 1.5GHZ 1MB L2 512 DDR2 PC4200 RAM 60GB 5400RPM HDD DVD+/-RW CDRW DVD-RAM

If the drive, cable and disk are known good, I'd assume it's either the controller or RAM. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

i know that the RAM is good. how can a controller be bad? can it be fixed? Toshiba M50-MX2: Celeron M 1.5GHZ 1MB L2 512 DDR2 PC4200 RAM 60GB 5400RPM HDD DVD+/-RW CDRW DVD-RAM

Make sure the floppy controller is enabled in cmos/bios setup and the drive is identified properly. Make sure the drive is connected to the end cable connection--the one after the 7-wire twist.

hmm.. the controller is enabled to "3.5in 1.44MB", and it apparantly is identified, and the floppy cable i'm using has only one connector, and that has a twist on it Toshiba M50-MX2: Celeron M 1.5GHZ 1MB L2 512 DDR2 PC4200 RAM 60GB 5400RPM HDD DVD+/-RW CDRW DVD-RAM

You list your OS as XP. I take it XP won't access or format it? When you boot to dos from a 98 disk (I assume you mean the 98 cd) it won't format or access. Typically booting from the cd will create a ramdrive at a: and shift the actual floppy drive letter to b:. So in that case you should try 'format b:'

Check the floppy data cable to make sure there are no broken wires - it's common to break some, especially when removing a tight data cable connector. Usually if there are broken wires they are the ones at the edges, right at the connector, and may be hidden under the cable clamp. If this is a used floppy drive and there's a possibility it was exposed to an AC voltage surge or spike the computer wasn't protected from, or it was installed when a power supply failed, I've seen a half dozen or so floppy drives that were damaged by that, the led seems to work normally, the drive is recognized in the bios, but the logic board is damaged and it either can't format or it doesn't find a disk in the drive at all. If that might be the case, try another floppy drive. On many computers if you specify your boot order as CD drive first, floppy second, hard drive third, you can't boot a bootable floppy in a floppy drive. If you specify floppy drive first, CD drive second, hard drive third, a bootable floppy is recognized fine.