Thinkpads Forum

Upgraded TP 600 from 98 to XP SP1 after all the proper BIOS upgrades, etc. Everything went well except for FD problem:
Sys. will boot ok from FD in bay (using Win 98 boot disk)
Booting to HD, FD lite flashes briefly (as expected), but trying to access known good floppy disk from Win Explorer or My Computer yields Msg: Insert Disk in A; - drive lite doesn't come on, reinserting disk has no effect.
CD drive in bay works fine.
Connecting external floppy works fine (as A: drive).
How come I can't get my ever-faithful floppy drive to work in the bay under XP?

Did you install a parallel scanner or something?

Nope - nothing new.
I had the CDROM drive in the bay when I installed XP ('cause it came on a CD, of course), and put the FD back in afterwards. I don't know if XP regards that as a change.
Device Manager shows two drives installed. I tried removing one, but it showed back up after the next bootup.
??????????????????

Do you have a B: drive listed in My Computer? Windows looks at the internal vs. external connection on a 600 as different controller, so it will probably give them different letters (not true under '98 ).

If you DON'T have a B: drive listed, next question is have you ever attached anything to the parallel port?

Thanks for working through this with me Sean.
To answer your question, no, there has been no changes to the system since it last ran successfully under 98.
I ran a few different configuration setups and compared to how it looked in “My Computer", finishing with testing with an attempt at bringing up a directory listing. Each device contained a known working disk. A reboot was performed between each device swap. (HD partitions are C, D, E, and F).
Here’s the results:
In Bay External Conn. My Computer Works?
Set 1 CDR G Y
--- A ---
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Set 2 CDR G Y
Ext FD A Y
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Set 3 FD A (?) (will boot to A:)
After XP boot: N
(Msg: Insert Disk in A:)
--- ---- ----
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Set 4 FD --- (will boot to A:)
After XP boot: N
Ext FD A Y
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Device Manager shows two floppy drives enabled. Disabling # 2,
using Set 4: A accesses Ext FD
Enabling # 2, Disabling # 1:
--- Nothing showing to
access.

I hope this makes sense to you. Bottom line: FD in bay will boot ok, but once XP takes over it disappears. Clicking on A: in device Manager only works if I have the External FD connected. No B: ever shows in My Computer, even though Device Manager shows 2 drives.
It acts like a IRQ conflict (#6 assigned to Controller) but I don’t think the drives have a IRQ – just the controller.
Do you know how the Ctrlr auto-detects the drives?