I have an "antique" I am trying to fix up for someone. The machine is a P133 with 2 hard drives. 1 change I made was to make the larger of the 2 drives the master and the smaller one the slave. That seemed to work fine, but now all of a sudden, the floppy stopped working. Tried a second floppy drive, but still nothing. I know it's not a problem with the motherboard as I put it in upside down and the light stayed on. Since it is an old machine, neither of the 2 drives had jumper settings listed on them. I played around with both until I got the proper master/slave combination. That's when the problem started. Does anyone out there know if improper jumper settings can affect the floppy drive? (NOTE: The floppy is on it's own IDE)

Hard drive jumper settings should not affect the floppy. Only your bios settings (for the floppy), the controller, and the drive itself should affect floppy performance. Is the controller an on-board controller (on the motherboard) or is it an ISA controller card seated in a slot?

The controller is integrated into the motherboard. I doubt it's defective as it lights up when plugged in upside down and turns off when I take it out. The drive is OK as I had a brand new one which did the same thing.

What do you put in upside down ??? The board ??? Then check if there are any connections with the case!!! The floppy ??? Check the connectors on the board and the floppy. The red side of the cable has to go to the side of pin1 on the board and on the floppy and on some floppies pin1 is on the other side as on the harddrives (had that problem myself. Also you have to connect the connector behind the twisted cables to the floppy! Hope that helps!

Check that the cable is plugged in correctly. Unlike a hard disk cable, there are four possible ways of connecting a floppy cable and only one of them is correct. For some reason floppy cables rearly have locating lugs on the connectors. To check that it is plugged in identfiy pin one on the motherboard and floppy disk. Pin one on the cable has a red stripe down its length. Match them up and you should be fine. Most floppy disks these days use cable select. That is drive A and Drive B is determined by which connector the drive is plugged into. The end connector is drive A and the middle is drive B. If the light on the floppy stays on permantly it is a sure sign the cable is plugged in incorrectly. Stuart

I would test (one at a time)the floppy and its ide cable in another pc to see if they work ok. Also I would test a known good floppy in the P133 to see if the pc is ok. Possibly you knocked a jumper off inadvertently from the original floppy. Good luck - Keep us posted.

If the floppy data cable has three connectors, (one for the controller end and two more for two drives), the end where the cable is split and twisted 180 degrees is the A connector.