Here is my issue: I am rebuilding a pc and have replaced the mobo with an asrock K7VT6. I am gernerally satisfied with the way things have gone BUT the bios and windows both fail to recognize my floppy drive. ... ... allow me to clarify, the bios and windows are only capable of detecting my floppy drive when the ide cable is inserted backwards - I do know that it is backwards because the red stripe on the ide is facing away from the power connector and the light remains on continuously and the drive is not functional in this state. I have tried 3 different ide cables and 2 different floppies. Is there anyone out there who can shed some light on this situation? my only conclusion is that the motherboard is defective (I have also flashed the bios twice to no avail).

1: is not an ide cable as it has 34 pins not 40 pins so is called a floppy cable. 2: pin 1 of cable is not always beside power connector as there is no standard for which side pin 1 should be on. 3: check floppy drive data connector & you should see 1 pin is missing near 1 side. that tells you that is pin 1 side besides a stamp on drive casing denoting pin 1. 4: if no light on constant on drive while in windows, try have it read a disk david

%. you have to tell the bios which floppy drive you have.

Since the bios will recognise the floppy drive with the cable plugged in the wrong way, are you sure it is correctly oriented on the motherboard?

Floppy drive cables have a twist in them to enable cable select for the floppy drives. The connectors either side of the twist are for the drives, with drive A: being the one one the end. Because of this twist there are four possible way of connecting the cable and only one of them is correct. Unlike an IDE cable where there are only two. The missing pin mentioned in post Post 1 isn't always there, or not there. I have a collection of redundant floppy disk cables and only one of them has the missing pin. Stuart

The red stripe goes on the opposite side from the power connector. Opposite of all the other ribbons.