LS-120 help

[JJDyn0mite]

I just installed an LS-120 hoping to replace my floppy. I have my drives set up like this: Primary master: HD (c: and d: ), primary slave: LS-120 (e: ), secondary master: DVD (f: ), secondary slave: CDRW (g: ). I went to the bios and changed the boot sequence to LS-120, c and I set it to no floppy drive. When I rebooted, all of the drives were recognized, but there was an additional 5 1/2" floppy drive set to A:. Of course I don't have a 5 1/2" floppy drive and when I clicked on it, it froze windows explorer. So my first question is how do I remove the 5 1/2" drive from a:?

Second question: When I tried to use a boot up disk to boot from the LS-120, it just went right into windows, instead of booting to the dos prompt like I wanted it to. How do I get it to boot from the LS? It is recognized and reads and writes fine, I'm just having the problems I just described. This is my first time using an LS, so if anyone can help, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[JJDyn0mite]

Guess I should say my specs:

Abit bh6 1.0 (just flashed it to most recent bios)
celeron 366 @ 2.0v (not oc'd currently)
14.4 IBM deskstar 7200
128 pc100 ram
hp 9100 cdrw
toshiba 1212 dvd
ls-120
g400 32mb
mx300
LT winmodem
aopen hx45 midtower

 

[corkyg]

LS-120s do not like to be slaved to the main HDD.

Try swapping the LS-120 and the CDRW. I have all my LS-120s (3 of them) slaved to the CD ROM drives. They like that.

Make sure again that you have your floppy drive removed in BIOS and that the LS-120 is on the boot list. I keep my floppies and my LS-120s are B drives. Did you create a bootable LS-120 disk or were you using a regular boot floppy?

You remove the bogus 5.25" drive in Device Manager . . . not Explorer. Having both an internal CDRW and DVD along with the LS-120 may be a bit of a muchness. If the CDRW were external you would be golden.

 

[CAMS]

There is usually several places to disable A drive, in the first setup screen set A & B to none then look in the bios for FDC (floppy disk controller) and disable it.

Also get the LS120 of the same chain as your HD, I think the LS 120 is a mode4 device and will slow your HD to the same speed. Try the DVD or CDRW or buy a seperate controller card and have them all as master.

 

[JJDyn0mite]

Thanks guys (girls?)... I kind of figured that it might be the slave to HD thing, but my problem now is cables. I have two 2-device IDE cables, one has about 1.5-2" between the connectors which doesn't give a lot of room, so I had that one on the two cd drives since they are the closest together. Guess I'll try to figure out the spacing, I'd really rather not have to use another controller.

Corky, how do you make the LS a b: drive? It automatically gets set to e: for me (the next letter after HD partitions) I went ahead and put my floppy back in, so it's at A: for now, but I'd rather not use it if I can get this figured out (5 drives in a mid tower case is pretty damn ugly and crowded) Anyway, thanks for the help guys and I'll try playing with it a little more.

 

[Prodigy^]

"I have all my LS-120s (3 of them)...."

not to be silly, but THREE LS-120's?!?! seriously, what are you using them for?!

 

[Soccerman]

hmm.. now I'm confused. doesn't the LS120 connect to the floppy cable? I've never seen one before so I don't know. The thing is, it seems easy to set my computer to replace the Floppy with the LS120, there's only a few options I need to change.. one in the Standard BIOS setup, (where you can change what kind of floppy drives you have), and then the startup thing..

 

[JJDyn0mite]

Well, I've managed to arrange everything so that I have:
Primary master: HD (c:, d: )
Primary slave: cdrw (e: )
Secondary master: dvd (g: )
secondary slave: ls (f: )

A: is still showing up as 5 1/2" floppy, can't figure out how to remove it in the device manager. Here's how it looks in Win Explorer, really weird:

3 1/2 in. floppy (f: )
5 1/2 in. floppy (a: )
HD (c: )
HD (d: )
cdrw (e: )
3 1/2 in. floppy (f: )
dvd (g: )
This is exactly how it looks, why the heck is the LS (f listed twice?


Floppy controller is disabled in bios, boot sequence: ls-120, c:
Floppy A:=none
Floppy B:=none

Still won't boot to a boot disk in the LS (on a reg floppy, not LS disk)

I'm going to bed now, can't figure this one out, maybe it will help to sleep on it. Thanks for the suggestions so far, any further help is appreciated.

 

[Remnant2]

In my experience with LS-120s, they had that exact same problem when I was using an old motherboard that didn't really know what they were.

When I upgraded my really old cyrix 6x86 w LS-120 to a FIC va503+ 300mhz about a year ago, it fixed the phantom floppy problem, and moved the LS drive from D to A like it should be.

But, it seems like you have a newer system than that, so I don't know what it could be.

 

[Stringy]

soccerman: the LS120 is an ATAPI device, just like a zip drive...

as fer the problem at hand, I have had mine fer over 2 years, bought it when it first came out, and I've run mine anywhere on the IDE chains, but most people have trouble with it on the Primary IDE channel...

Make sure you have win98 or Win95 OSR2.x
I've disabled the Floppy controler before, but on this Asus P2B it hangs up on windows boot up, go figure..
If you have a floppy installed, the LS120 will automatically goto B: drive... if you want the LS120 to be A: just leave the other floppy out..




Craig

 

[corkyg]

PRODIGY: . . . I use them for storing data and to support clients. I put LS-120 drives in all systems, and when I need to move big files around . . . it's easy. Been using them for two years now and have gotten very used to them.

I also do all my downloads to them and then check them for virii before.

Oh yeah . . . for some long distance clients, I mail them fixes and stuff on LS-120s. CDRs work too . . . but sometimes a CD drive ain't there.

JJDYNOMITE: I simply inserted the drive, and PnP took care of making it B and I never argued with it. Maybe it got confused trying to find the end of the other drives and readers (I have M on one machine and through O on the other.)

 

[Gabus]

I have a Bh6 ver 1.01 (nv bios) with 2 hard drives and a reader and LS-120 that all work OK. I'm not going to be at my home computer for a couple more days so I can't give you my settings..which I will if you still need them. The only thing I remember is if you try and boot with disk in the LS-120, it comes up 5 1/4 and that it took some adjustment in Bios. I think I have FDC disabled in Bios but still have boot sequence A: not Ls-120. Sorry but until I'm in front of computer can't give you much more info.

 

[CayJon]

LS 120 FAQS page: http://faq.imation.com/cgi-shl/imation/faq/superdiskview.pl?917296909

 

[boomerang]

I had problems similar to what you're having JJ, when installing my LS-120 with an Abit board.

First try jumpering the drive to Master. That got me started off in the right direction. Hopefully your DVD will be happy as slave.

I would boot into Safe Mode and remove all but the first listing of any device in Device Manager. You will undoubtedly find multiple listings of many of the devices you have been moving around in your system as of late. This has an added bonus of decreasing your bootup times somewhat.

Sounds as if your BIOS is configured correctly.

Hope this helps.

 

[JJDyn0mite]

Thanks again for all the help, I still need to play with it a little and I'm going to try making it the secondary master and see if that helps.

Gabus, if you could let me know what bios settings you use at your computer when you get back to it I would appreciate it. Thanks, I'll let you know if I solve the problem.