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5170 floppy drive suddenly stopped working?

SunSpotter

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2019
Messages
54
Location
California
A little backstory, I got an AT a working by fixing what turned out to be a simple jumper problem with the display card. I'm pretty sure that previously, this thing hadn't been in working order since the early 90s.

Anyways, fired up a copy of zork, was pretty pleased with myself and went to bed. Next day, suddenly the FDD doesn't work. On further analyzing the problem, I've noticed that the original FDD makes seeking noises on startup, but won't actually read anything, and won't do anything more than spin and light up the LED once the computer reaches DOS.

I've tried using my epson sd-800 in place of the original, since it's what I would like to use in the long run anyway, but that gives a diskette error and doesn't act any different in DOS.

I've verified my diskettes work on other drives, and I inspected the drive and the controller card to make sure some caps hadn't gone bad, but as far as I can tell everything should be ok. Really stumped as to what's causing this, and why it doesn't like my epson drive either.
 
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