Not sensing Floppy Drive

["Gary McKinney" <gmckinney@megabits.net>]

I have a PC164 Motherboard which seems to have a problem sensing the Floppy
drive (dva0 under SRM).  It activates the drive but there is no head
activity and the SRM returns an error message which basically reads "unable
to open dva0".  Has anyone run into this situation and what was the
corrective action taken.

  I fear the onboard floppy controller may have a problem in the floppy data
in line (internal problem) which is the reason the board is not reading the
floppy.  I have tryed replacing the floppy drive (twice) and replacing the
floppy drive cable (twice) with known good hardware.

  The only thing which has changed from the time the board was reading the
drive until it stopped was the board was moved from a tower case to a
rack-mount case.  Care was execised to insure there was not a possiblity of
static damage during the move (anti-static workbench - grounded work area -
ect, ect, ect) and the board was not subjected to any stress in the move
operation (both the tower case and the rackmount case have a removable
motherboard mounting plate so as to preclude physically stressing the
motherboard).

Does anyone know if the SRM is capable of probing the ISA buss for a floppy
drive controller card in place of the onboard floppy controller (one
option).  If not then I have to figure out a method by which to get the
machine booted.  I have an EB164 system as well and suppose I could move the
system disk from the PC164 system, setup for booting from the hard drive,
then move the drive back over to the PC164 but I would much rather have a
floppy operational (for recovery if in the field as the machine is slated to
be moved to another location for a T-1 connection to the Internet).


TIA,

Gary...