Floppy drive testing software?

[WyWyWyWy]

I got five floppy drives today... they are very strange, they some read disks, but some disks they don't want to read, and that every drive has its own charateristics... these five brothers seem to have very different taste.

So, is there any universal utility that can throughly test floppy drives?
(Like memtest86 is for ram)

Thanks a lot.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Thorough scandisk on a known good floppy full of data maybe?

[WyWyWyWy]

Hi,

Thanks but it is not as simple...
The floppy brothers are really strange.

e.g.
Drive X can format and r/w a disk no problem, but it cannot r/w a disk formatted by Drive Y.
Drive Y can format and r/w a disk no problem, it can also r/w a disk formatted by Drive X, but not Drive Z.
etc...

They all have distinctive characteristics....
So I want to see which one is actually working, and which one is pretending to be working.

Saying that, I just got a feeling that I got something mixed because they all look identical.

[Wombat]

The problem you've described isn't exactly uncommon. That's what happens when the drives aren't synchronized correctly.

[WyWyWyWy]

Hi what do you mean by "synchonise"?
I turn off the pc and change drive every time I do testing (i.e. only one floppy drive connected at a time).

And they are all the same make - Panasonic.

Thanks.

[Kruzin]

They're worn out.
Misaligned heads.
Not worth fixing.
I trash at least one floppy drive a week at work because if this very same behavior.

[WyWyWyWy]

They are brand new OEM.
Sealed before arrival...

But I did open it to investigate...
Because these drives are so cheap I bought them for experiments.
Did I mess something up?

[Wombat]

Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
They are brand new OEM.
Sealed before arrival...

But I did open it to investigate...
Because these drives are so cheap I bought them for experiments.
Did I mess something up?

Nope, probably wasn't you. These things are DOA. They may be sealed, but there's an awful lot of damage that can be done through gravity and magnetics.

[WyWyWyWy]

Originally posted by Wombat
Nope, probably wasn't you. These things are DOA. They may be sealed, but there's an awful lot of damage that can be done through gravity and magnetics.

Very possible, because the bezel of one of the drives is broken on arrival.

But now, since I have five of them, I need to figure out which is good and which is bad... (or all DOA!)

[Wombat]

Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
Very possible, because the bezel of one of the drives is broken on arrival.

But now, since I have five of them, I need to figure out which is good and which is bad... (or all DOA!)

They probably all travelled together. Return them all.

[DirtFarmer]

Quicktech Professional, from Ultra-X INc is a thorough hardware diagnostics. Floppy tests show many brand-new oem floppy drives fail straight from the box. The software is not free, but not too expensive either. We rely on the diagnostics and find alot of failed hardware with it.

But sometimes for the price of new floppy drives its easier to throw a replacement at it then take the time to test.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
Very possible, because the bezel of one of the drives is broken on arrival.

But now, since I have five of them, I need to figure out which is good and which is bad... (or all DOA!)

Like Wombat said, return them all

[WyWyWyWy]

I cannot... I have already modded them... :~~~(~
Plus it is over 14days "cooling off" period...

[Marshmallowman]

Long shot.

Get a standard floppy, a known good one (older one in a working machine)

Format and writes ome files to a disk

Then put the disk in the oem drives and adjust the heads until they read correctly

Catch being, this used to work in the old days, but I do not know if it is even possible to adjust heads anymore, as they are such a low end item nowdays

Look for a hole (perhaps covered by a sticker) for adjustment, if you have to take off the cover to adjust them, I would give up and buy some new ones from a more reliable source..

PS what brand?

What may be worth a try is to see if shoving the disk in with a "bit" of force helps...I have a newish acer comupter at work with a BS face plate thingy, I have to slam dunk disks to get it to read properly, luckily I rarely use floppies.

[Kurt]

What do you mean by "adjust"? There's the brute force attack: open the drive, slap the head back into place (doesn't work with all models) or you could also take a small screwdriver and try to adjust the head positioning on the "unending" screw...