I just recently bought a couple VGA cards for my 286-12 and 386 computers from a recent haul. I'v never really worked on anything past a 486, so this is all new to me.
Setup gives very few options, has drive numbers for the mfm drive, and sizes for the floppies. I put a 3.5" drive in it and configured it as drive 1, 1.4mb. It spun on startup but gave to same error. F1 gives a replace boot media, press enter error, but the drive is unresponsive.. Tried that with 2 different controllers. I don't have a 5.25" dos disk atm, so I wouldn't know if that drive would work. Any ideas/suggestion?
An SD550 mayble (http://www.artofhacking.com/th99/m/S-T/33307.htm) If so, how's your battery?
Check to see if your BIOS supports SWAP FLOPPY A<>B. A simple toggle may fix that.
What brand.model of floppy are you using? If you peek at the floppy during boot, does it do a seek?
Also see if the fdd is plugged in right-- it can happen to anybody especially if it doesn't have the plastic guide around the pins. But I think that error is because it isn't jumpered right (either on the drive or the motherboard).
But if it worked before, check and see if each setting will work that apply to your drive (720 or 1.4).
The drive that came with the machine is an EPSON SMD-300. The other drive looked generic. On power up, it does a seek, and the light comes on before it reports the error.
We really need to ID your motherboard if it's not an SD550. If it is, note that you already have a floppy controller onboard. You'll need to set motherboard JP12 open if you want to use the multi-I/O card--or disable the controller on the multi-I/O and connect your floppies to the motherboard. Your poison.
It is, thanks for the help, Chuck! Apparently some idiot put jumpers in the onboard controller, so I overlooked it. Removed that plug, now both the 3.5" and 5.25" floppies work great on the mfm card (with j20 removed). The mfm hd booted fine into something called SPEED only for TURBO COMPUTERS. It had some games, nfl, weel of fortune and solitaire. HD is 20mb ST 225.