My old 500mgz PC gave up the goat.

Must have been because of the 100+ restarts till I got those TCP/IP configs right for my network & ICS.

A. Sometimes:-
When I press the button, the Green PWR lites-up, the Red HD lights-up for 3-4 secs and goes out, but the floppy light stays on continously.

The PCU fan runs, but there is no activity from the HD as it boots-up, and nothing on the screen (which is S/Wed ON by the way).

I put in another HD with no difference.

I put in another floppy no difference

I recycled all cables, Ram sticks, & even the CPU.

B. Sometimes:-
Boots up saying "Floppy drive fault" do F1 & it boots OK,
but no floppy of caurce.

Please, please do'nt say dump it as cannot afford another for the wife.

Saving to upgrade mine with the bits you say for the fs9.

Any ideas to get me going for a while?          luke

What is a "post" , an error message?

Please note, Sometimes A & B cases & actions taken.

When it boots I got into Bios setup to check floppy OK.

Just one normal bib at first start.

No errors except, if it does manage to boot "NO Floppy",
and when it starts, tried 4 floppies and none works, and light REMAINS ON continously.   ? is it Mobo end of cable?

Thnx congo

And stripped & refitted all except cdrom. I'll do that too now plus PSU.

Quote:



Its the screen you get with all the info on your comp like mhz, memory, etc.

If you have an OEM computer, it might display the OEM logo (like the dell logo or something).

One beep is a normal good start, so your PC is ok. I think......

Constant light on the floppy usually means the floppy is dead or the cable is fitted incorrectly, usually the latter.

Cabling is "critical". You will get errors or boot failures if it's incorrect.

If you are not sure about all aspects of cabling, let me know and I will post the details.

If you haven't touched any cables prior to your problem, and the drives all check out fine... then it may be the mainboard that is failing. I call this type of problem I/O chip errors, and I attribute it to the mainboard's logic failing to configure the drives through malfunction. Answer: new mobo

Fortunately, I/O failure is rare and usually occurs through incorrect installation of hardware which involves cables carrying voltage/current to non-compliant hardware......... (plugging in the wrong cable to the wrong device, yup, some people will just MAKE it fit!) Other causes could be PSU failure or damage to mainboard I/O logic via power spikes or other voltage/current irregularities.

You must do what i said in my first  post, read it again.

You can't possibly eliminate device error if you leave the devices hooked up, and that includes the cdrom drive.

The BIOS does not test all devices and give you a readout of their functionality, it merely configures the mainboard to accept them and sets parameters.

Your statement above, that bios says "floppy ok" makes no sense to me. A floppy is only"ok" if it works and doesn't screw up the rest of the system. I have had experience with CDROM drives that were "on the way out" and gave intermittent boot failures or caused hard drives to read/write fail in windows. This is because they mess with the IDE configuration and totally confuse the PC.

Like I said above in first post, strip it bare, see if it works. Add hardware 1 step at a time (hdd first) until you isolate the faulty component.

You do of course realise that this is "All your fault" and this will teach you to try and network the easy way!" 

Sorry, did not explain, as I had things change the floppy in bios to "None" before, that is what I went to check, and called it OK.

Nothing was moved, just out of the blue one morning.

As I said, all were removed & replaced from CPU downwards, including the CDRom at the end, in a process of elimination, the most suspect Floppy cable was even renewed and if you noticed I tried 3 other known good floppies to no avail.

Now, prepare for it......, late last night just before dumping the PC, fearing the Mobo end of the cable, why I do not know I exchanged floppies with my XP PC.

Both floppies worked & both PCs now are OK!

This is posted from the 98, networked & ICS'ed, as if nothing has happened.

Thnx for the help, will see what happens next.

I am dog goned,                   luke