William R. Walsh wrote:
Hi!

The remaining problem with this DeskPro EN 866 sff
is that the floppy drive won't work.

One of my Deskpro EN SFF machines exhibited this same failure. It
turned out that the stepper motor and lead screw driving the heads was
simply stuck. It seemed to have been caused by disuse.

I got it freed up by repetitively inserting and removing a garbage
diskette and asking the computer to read it. It slowly came back to
life and is now working fine.

Particularly bad cases might call for taking the drive apart (which
requires a precision set of small tools in some cases) and cleaning
it. You might also need to make sure the lead screw driving the heads
can move freely and isn't jammed or blocked.

These things collect plenty of lint over the years, so you might find
a lint ball in the drive that is messing things up. You could probably
see one (if there's one in there) by flipping open the drive door and
shining a light in there.

Initially the seller, a refurbishing company, seem
to have not plugged the power connector in (labelled
P2?), which I've now done.

I would imagine that the prior owner of the machine did this instead
of the refurbishing company. Chances are they thought of it as a
"security" measure.

If you don't mind my asking, where did you get your Deskpro?

I don't see how any of the leads can be in wrong -
they seem to only go one way?

If you put the power connector in backwards, you'd have a smoking ruin
in place of a floppy drive. The data connector can be connected
backwards without lasting damage.

I never tried a generic floppy drive in any of mine--they haven't
needed replacement.

Otherwise, a really good machine for 30 quid - almost
makes me sick I bought a new laptop.

They are *really* great systems. If you're ever looking for a similar
system with more processing power (Pentium 4!) the Evo D500 series
(also available in SFF) are much less common but still nicely made. I
have one of the Evo D500 SFF models and it's just a Deskpro with the
drives moved around and a P4 1.7 GHz CPU.

p.s. Being curious about Linux, if anyone can also let
me know if I can set this machine up to dual-boot,
and what is recommended, that info would be great,
here or emailed to poachedeggs at hotmail dot co
dot uk .

You can dual boot just like you would any other computer. The Deskpro
EN will run Linux nicely--I've been using gOS Beta 3.0 on one of my
mine. It's only single boot, though.

William

Maybe it's me, but it is far easier to replace a floppy drive than to
disassemble it. Cleaning out dust and dirt inside a floppy drive
sometimes works, too... Ben Myers