KT7A-Raid / floppy drive problem

[Merc7]

I'm building a system for a friend and have run into a very frustrating problem. The machine will not recognize the floppy drive no matter what I do. I've tried 2 floppy drives, three different cables, and every different way possible of connecting the cables. All the cables i've tried either don't have the little notch on the end, or it's been cut off. This means i've been able to switch the direction of the cable to every way possible. I thought maybe the floppy drive I installed in the computer was broken, so I pulled a floppy drive from a working machine but got the same error when booting up. I enabled "boot up floppy seek" in the bios so I can check to see if I got it working before it tires to boot anything. I get the following error message every time:
"floppy disk(s) fail (40)"

Has anyone run into this before with this board? Could it just be a defective board?

Here's the system specs in case you're interested:

Abit KT7A-Raid MB
Athlon Thunderbird 1.0 Ghz CPU
Maxtor 15 gig IDE HD
Aureal vortex A3d PCI sound card
An old 56k ISA modem
40x ide cd-rom
radio shack cdr-w drive (2x4x16x I think)
Maxtor 15 gig IDE HD

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Pederv]

Just a small checklist:
In the bios, is the correct floppy type selected( A drive, 1.44 MB)
In the bios, is the enhanced floppy disabled?
Cables, are you connecting the floppy after the twist(usually last connector).
Cables, floppies don't always follow the red stripe next to power rule. Look on the floppy drive for the #1 pin and match that with the #1 pin on the motherboard.
Cables, is the power connection good?
Connectors, are any of the pins on the motherboard or floppy bent so it's not going in the cable connector?
Does the floppy led come on at all?
You've probably done all of these, if so then I think the board has a bad floppy controller.

 

[Merc7]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've determined that it has to be a bad floppy controller. I'm debating wether or not to return the board for a new one, or get an isa floppy controller or something like that. Anyone know of a place that sells those? If I return the board should I get the Abit again, or go with an ASUS A7V-133. Which board will give me less troubles?

 

[Riddler]

i have the kt7 raid and the a7v, and neither have given me any trouble, so i think either one is a safe bet, and the pro's and cons of either are few and miniscule.
it does sound like to me that you have a bad mobo, i would replace it, just to be safe.