Floppy woes persist even with new floppy drive

[spastic_orgiastic]

Several months ago, I started this thread. (Quick summary: The floppy drive in my Color Classic was doing weird stuff.)

After an attempt at cleaning produced no results, I decided to simply replace the drive with a used one purchased from eBay. But that still has't solved my problems...

• I tried to boot from a 7.5.3 Network Access disk and a 7.1 Disk Tools disk, but the disks were simply ejected after two or three seconds of drive activity. (I made the disks using the directions here AND the directions here. This happened with both the old drive AND the new drive.
  
• If I format the disk using my MacBook, the Color Classic has no trouble detecting it or copying a file to it. But then when I put it back in the MacBook, it doesn't mount; the only way to get it to show up again is to reformat it using Windows. (Note: I've upgraded to Leopard since I started the first thread.)
  
• I'll probably encounter more problems in the days ahead, but for now can anyone help me with the first two?
  

 

[spastic_orgiastic]

Correction -- regarding the second bullet, the "not mounting on the MB without first being reformatted in Windows" problem only happens when the disk was formatted (initialized) in the CC. Otherwise it works just fine.

 

[Apostrophe]

Hi,

Perhaps then, there's a problem with your logic board? I don't have a CC, so I don't know much about them, but if two different drives behave the same way and the disks are good, then your logic board's probably malfunctioning. Have you tried removing it (the board) for a visual inspection?

Also, do you have any other floppy-capable Macs? The way I know if a disk is good or bad is that I run it through several different computers. And even if you formatted the disk 'the right way', something could have gone wrong for whatever reason.

No doubt more people will come on who know more about CCs to give you advice, but my suggestion stands: you may need a different logic board.

-Apostrophe

 

[System6+Vista]

Try using a different disk. I made a system 6 bootdisk using my vista computer that my Macs could read when booted into their OS from the hard drive, and everything looked good, but they could not boot from the disk. I made copies on other floppys, and they work.

Also, last semester I had a Classic and an SE/30 at school, and neither could cooperate with disks. My vista computer liked both of their disks, but each time I tried to make them share HFS disks, they would tell me initialization was necessary. Finally I found just one disk that they could both use without reformatting. Also, there are disks that my Classic refuses to initialize, but the SE/30 does and vice versa. So I am learning to simply try many disks. I know its an amateur answer, but it helped my headache a bunch. And try disks from different manufacturers.

 

[Scott Baret]

Try using the drive in another Mac to isolate the problem.

 

[spastic_orgiastic]

An important new discovery...

When I use my old Compaq laptop to write the Network Access Disk, the disk works!

I guess that means there's something wrong with the USB floppy drive I've been using with my MacBook.

Thanks for helping out, everyone. But something tells me I might be back soon.