total newbie question on power

I have two 5" wide pc drives not working.

My single 3.5" wide floppy drive works fine.

Are the two 5" pc drives on the same or different voltages than the 3.5"
floppy?

What this one is an old one that I'm trying to get running again.

It's been to the shop several times, and they told me the two 5" drives
weren't working. That leaves the old flat drive.

The shop told me my main drive wasn't working. So, I put a new 80GB in.

I think I need to get one of my 5" pc drives to work so I have a way to load
Windows back in after the boot process.

If my 3.5" drive is working, I'm hoping my two bad drives are really bad,
and not all three bad.

Joel wrote:
> "rb" <rbig@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> I have two 5" wide pc drives not working.
>>
>> My single 3.5" wide floppy drive works fine.
>>
>> Are the two 5" pc drives on the same or different voltages than the 3.5"
>> floppy?
>
> It seems like you want to know more than an average newbie wants to know
> <bg>. These days, you don't see many people using floppy (very few office
> still do but very few), and I don't think you will find any newer system
> come with any floppy (not even 3-1/2).
>
> Back the to main question, I don't know if they use the same voltage or
> not, but usually not very important or if they do then may be just few volts
> or some amp difference which won't be any issue. Few things you want to
> know is the "twisted wide" and CMOS setting, and of course if you can find
> any 5-1/2 floppy or any program is small enough to run on floppy.
>
> Me, I haven't used any floppy for over a decade.. yes, some years ago I
> ran into few software setup requires floppy, but I managered to install
> directly from hard drive and CD.

By "5" side pc drive," he might just mean optical drives that fit into a
5" bay. I'll hazard an answer.

The standard connector for ATAPI optical drives (and PATA hard drives)
is the 4-pin "molex" connector. That's in reality a really imprecise
name, but here's what it looks like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:M..._connector.jpg

That connector serves two DC voltages, 5 and 12 VDC. The standard 3.25"
floppy drive power connector is the same pinout, but in a narrower
connector, but that should be fairly obvious from a brief examination of
a power supply.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/sup/partsDrive-c.html

Yes. Thanks.

Looks like if I have either 5/12vdc on the outside of the plugs I'll be OK.
Nice to know. Thanks.

With this, now I can check the supply voltage and see if that's whats wrong.
Should be easy.

I'm hoping I can put a new pc drive in and that will cure that part of the
problem.