Hi everybody, thank you all for your contributions.
@Karen: Eric is right, my original issue with FreeDOS floppy drive
letter has been solved by executing the boot from CD in "harddisk image"
easter egg mode. Also, later on I managed to install FreeDOS on a HD
partition, and also booting from there grants correct access to floppy
drive via the A: letter.
Actually, now I've no more issues with FreeDOS, so this thread should be
closed as being now widely off topic here.
Since you all were so kind to chime in with useful tidbits, though, I'm
going to provide some feedback here; then, if you are still interested
in this issue, I suggest to move to the following ongoing thread on
wcfed:
https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/technical-support/vintage-computer-hardware/1221236-can-t-read-superblock-error-with-5-25-360k-floppy-drives
@Travis: my BIOS supports just one floppy drive (likely for the reason
geneb explained), that's why I detached the original 3.5 to make room
for the 5.25 one. The drive cable has two connectors and the twist
between them; I tried several combinations of jumpers and connectors and
found that the end connector is the right one to attach the 5.25 drive to.
I'm using a 5.25/360K drive because it's the only one at hand; however,
I feel that I'll need to find a 5.25/1.2M drive, to overcome both the
BIOS missing the 5.25/360K option, and the likely hardware issue due to
the FDC not being able activate the drive (see
https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/technical-support/vintage-computer-hardware/40967-panasonic-ju455-fdd?p=499283#post499283)
@Eric: the above should explain why I only got SOME reactions from the
drive. If this hardware issue is confirmed, I feel there's nothing I can
do on settings/config that could work around it. I'm neither capable nor
inclined to tamper with the drive at the hardware level. I will give
VGACOPY another go, though.
Again thanks for your help!
Il 20/08/2021 22:58, Travis Siegel ha scritto:
Hmm, I was not aware of that, thanks for the info. Always good to
know possible causes of failure. Now there's one more to add to the
pile.
On 8/20/2021 3:05 PM, geneb wrote:
On Fri, 20 Aug 2021, Travis Siegel wrote:
There are multiple issues here.
First, if you want to use both floppy drives, your floppy cable must
have both connections on it, since there is rarely more than a
single floppy controller slot on a motherboard.
A quick note on this - if the motherboard is after a certain era, a
two drive cable won't help. As a cost reduction measure, chipset
manufacturers dropped the 2nd drive select pin off of the
controller. The BIOS configuration screen should reflect this by
only showing configuration information for a single floppy drive.
apologies for the noise if this doesn't apply. :)
g.
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