Do I have the right floppy cable?

[Ruggerbugger]

A while ago I bought one of these Akasa rounded floppy cables.



It has two connectors (no third connector in the middle of the cable), with the plastic pull-tabs for easy removal. Both of these are marked floppy, in contrast to my IDE cable, which has one end for the drive, and one marked "system".

I'm having trouble getting the floppy to work with this cable, which makes me wonder if I've bought the wrong cable. Any ideas?

[Allen]

Silly question, but did you make absolutely sure that the cable is plugged in the right way up? It will fit both ways so you might wanna check that first.

[Ruggerbugger]

Aaah, so are the cables not keyed like the IDE cables are then? Will check tonight.

[Allen]

If you mean by "keyed" that they have a little notch on one side, they do, but they can still be inserted incorrectly for some bizarre reason!

[rajagra]

Also, floppy cables normally have a twisted connection to the end floppy drive. This means you set both floppy's jumpers to be drive B:, and the twist magically converts the end drive to be A:
This was a brilliant (?) idea from IBM to make system building quicker/less error prone (?!)

Now your cable only has one drive connector, which means one of the following:

1) It has the twist in it. This means the cable is not bidirectional. You have to plug the correct connector into the motherboard. Get it the wrong way round and it won't work.

2) It doesn't have the twist in it. This means you have to set the floppy jumpers so it is set to drive A: instead of the normal B:. This might be difficult, as some modern floppy drives don't even have the jumpers any more, LOL!

[Allen]

Rounded cables don't have the "twist" in them. Well, mine don't.

[schmunk]

Get rid of the floppy drive, you luddite!

[Allen]

Get rid of the floppy drive, you luddite!

What a great comment...

I still use a floppy drive for only 3 things:

A) Flashing a BIOS
B) Booting a Startup disk to manually partition/format drives (old habit I suppose)
C) Installing Windows onto a SATA drive (probably coz I CBA to make a new SP2 CD)

I suppose I could get by without one, but to me, it's just easier to include it.

[directhex]

i'm over-generalising, but the notch on the connector should point DOWN on the floppy drive end, not up (even though there's a gap upwards but not downwards)

[Ruggerbugger]

Will have a fiddle tonight. It has occurred to me to get rid of it, but in common with Allen, I've used it for setting up SATA drivers and flashing the BIOS, although I haven't yet done that with my current board (it has no issues, and Asus don't seem to bother writing new BIOSes anyway).

[Grey M@a]

Rugger, look at the american site instead of the UK, the drivers and BIOS's seem to be updated far more often on the American site with the UK one not showing some of them.

[skuzgib]

OT here, but Schmunk, your avatar is inspired

[Firelord]

I use a USB floppy here as it can be put away when finished... much better solution

[Allen]

Bah, no need to spend out on an extra like that, with a normal floppy (normally everyone has these anyway) just plug in 2 cables instead of 1.

[Firelord]

In the mountain mods case you didn't have a floppy bay so couldn't install one easily... I just got a USB one cheap of eBay and it means tidier cabling inside the case

[Allen]

Fair enough. But you don't have to leave the floppy drive attached, just connect it when you need it, just the same as a USB one, but cheaper.