Fan Controller and Fan causes floppy drive failure

Response from Vantec (originally they couldn't reproduce the problem.)
Andrew,

Correction, we let the test run for a while longer and the disk did become
corrupt. This is a very startling issue that has NEVER come up before.
Which is amazing since the NXP-205 is not new to the market. I will run
more tests tomorrow and hopefully come up with something more conclusive.
We have also contacted our engineers to see if they have a response. I also
requested that readings be made on emissions. I will keep you informed.

Thank you for choosing Vantec.

"Andrew Diamond" wrote in message
. ..
My thesis, which will sound nutty, is the following: The use of my Vantec
Fan Controller to turn down the speed of my two intake 80mm case fans
causes
my floppy drive to fail. I will defend this below but now for the
setup,
pathology, and history.

Setup:
I recently installed a Vantec Silver Nexus NXP-205 Rheobus (with 4 fan
controllers) in my Kingwin K11 case. This case comes with 4 80mm fans two
of which are intake fans that sit at the bottom front of the machine. Not
much above these fans is the 3.5 inch drive external bays. The bottom bay
contains my Vantec fan controller and the one immediately above that has
my
floppy drive. These two intake fans, that are close to the floppy drive,
are attached to the first two of the 4 fan speed controllers. The other
two
controllers are attached to the other two distant case fans but apparently
have no effect adverse on my floppy drive (regardless of how I set their
speed controllers).

History/pathology:
The two intake fans are the loudest. I experimented with turning their
speed down by setting their fan controllers to the lowest setting and
noticing that the system temperature was not adversely effected (even
though
it was clear from the noise attenuation that the fans turned much much
slower). I don't use my floppy drive much but eventually, over a few
weeks,
when I did I noticed it behaved erratically. I did not think for a moment
that these two things were related. Specifically, some boot floppies (3
different ones) wouldn't boot almost all of the time. I thought the
floppies were bad but they booted in other machines.

I decided to quickly bypass this problem by making a boot CD from the
floppy, one that same computer because it had the burner, using Nero CD
burner, but when I tried that it couldn't read the files from the floppy
or
of that floppy's copy. I tried this multiple times.

To me, from my experience, this indicated that the floppy drive was
probably
bad (versus the motherboard or the cable).

However, when I swapped the floppy with that from another computer the
supposedly bad floppy drive worked great.

So, I figured it must be the floppy cable but when I tried the original
floppy cable with the original floppy drive on the second computer it
still
worked great!

Maybe a bad MB, hard to believe, so now I was confused so I reattached
that
cable and floppy to my original machine but I decided, really out of
laziness, to leave the floppy drive outside the case on a mat. This time
everything worked. I booted it to the floppy no less than 10 times with
no
problem (taking this floppy out and putting it back in - rebooting by
power
off, reset and CTRL-ALT-DEL).

I booted up into Win2k and using Nero I was now able to make my boot CD
from
this floppy. I did this multiple times.

I then repeated this whole process a few times removing the floppy from
the
drive bay (but still having it attached) and then putting it back in. I
even removed it from the case out the front still leaving the cables
attached so I wouldn't have to remove and reattach the floppy cables as
that
could theoretically be another source of error. Every time when the
floppy
drive was in the case it wouldn't work but when it was outside the case it
would.

Couldn't believe it!

Finally, with the floppy drive installed in the drive bay, I turned up the
fan controllers of the two intake fans all the way and NOW I was able to
use
Nero to successfully create the boot CD from the boot floppy.

I did this test multiple times. When I turned the two (front) fan
controllers all the way up the floppy always worked but when I turned it
all
the way down it always failed. It seems to fail even if the fan
controllers
half way but does work if its about 2/3 way.

Then I tried turning the other two fan controllers all the way down with
the
intake fan controllers all the way up. This worked fine. But when I
turned
one of the intake fan controllers all the way down the floppy failed.
Here's
a table:
The first four columns are the settings of fan controller 1 through 4
respectively (values: B - bottom power, T - Top Power, H - Half Power, 2 -
2/3 Power). The fifth column is whether the floppy drive failed (values:
F - failed, W - worked)

B B T T F
T T B B W
B B H H F
2 2 H H W
B T H H W
T B H H W
T B B B F

Conclusion:
So clearly, there is a problem related to the Vantec Fan controller
controlling these fans but after that I don't know what to say. The
tests
"B B T T F" and "T T B B W" indicate that the problem is context dependant
on which fans are being controlled. Specifically, turning the first two
fans, the ones close to the floppy drive, down will create a floppy failed
while turning down the other two fans may not. However "T B H H W" and "T
B
B B F" indicate that the problem is NOT related to those two close intake
fans because they were set the same in both tests but setting the far two
fans low caused a failure.

Ummm.

Below is the email I just received from Vantec. They essentially claim that
its a fluke (1/100 case) and that I should be fine as long as I don't put
the device underneath the floppy drive. (Reminds me of the old joke where
the patient complains to the Dr. that his arm hurts. After hearing that the
patient has no insurance the Dr. tells the patient not to lift up his arm.)

So, anyone want to try this and test the "1 in a 100" theory. I'm tempted
to pick another one up at Frys to see what happens. I can always return
it.


-------- Vantec Response ----------

Andrew,

Here is the situation. We had our engineers overseas run some tests as
well. According to them, they set up 100 test cases. Of those 100, 1
failed. On the one that failed, the inductors were directly below the
read/write head of the floppy drive. In other similar test cases, the same
error did not occur. Also, we had one failure using a device we took out of
RMA. On subsequent units, we could not reproduce the same failure.

With this in mind, here are your options. (1) You can simply move the
NXP-205 into the top 3.5" slot, thus eliminating the situation where the
inductors could effect any device. (2) You can try to shield the top of the
NXP-205 yourself. (3) We can perform an RMA for you.

If you choose the third option, you will need to fill out the RMA form and
send a fax or e-mail of it back to us, along with a copy of the invoice. We
will then issue you an RMA number for you to send the device back.

Again, while this is certainly an issue, it seems to be a very rare case.
As for the fans, you might consider the UV LED fans we offer. The noise
level is a respectable 34dBA with a 36CFM rating.

Thank you for choosing Vantec.

"Andrew Diamond" wrote in message
. ..
My thesis, which will sound nutty, is the following: The use of my Vantec
Fan Controller to turn down the speed of my two intake 80mm case fans
causes
my floppy drive to fail. I will defend this below but now for the
setup,
pathology, and history.

Setup:
I recently installed a Vantec Silver Nexus NXP-205 Rheobus (with 4 fan
controllers) in my Kingwin K11 case. This case comes with 4 80mm fans two
of which are intake fans that sit at the bottom front of the machine. Not
much above these fans is the 3.5 inch drive external bays. The bottom bay
contains my Vantec fan controller and the one immediately above that has
my
floppy drive. These two intake fans, that are close to the floppy drive,
are attached to the first two of the 4 fan speed controllers. The other
two
controllers are attached to the other two distant case fans but apparently
have no effect adverse on my floppy drive (regardless of how I set their
speed controllers).

History/pathology:
The two intake fans are the loudest. I experimented with turning their
speed down by setting their fan controllers to the lowest setting and
noticing that the system temperature was not adversely effected (even
though
it was clear from the noise attenuation that the fans turned much much
slower). I don't use my floppy drive much but eventually, over a few
weeks,
when I did I noticed it behaved erratically. I did not think for a moment
that these two things were related. Specifically, some boot floppies (3
different ones) wouldn't boot almost all of the time. I thought the
floppies were bad but they booted in other machines.

I decided to quickly bypass this problem by making a boot CD from the
floppy, one that same computer because it had the burner, using Nero CD
burner, but when I tried that it couldn't read the files from the floppy
or
of that floppy's copy. I tried this multiple times.

To me, from my experience, this indicated that the floppy drive was
probably
bad (versus the motherboard or the cable).

However, when I swapped the floppy with that from another computer the
supposedly bad floppy drive worked great.

So, I figured it must be the floppy cable but when I tried the original
floppy cable with the original floppy drive on the second computer it
still
worked great!

Maybe a bad MB, hard to believe, so now I was confused so I reattached
that
cable and floppy to my original machine but I decided, really out of
laziness, to leave the floppy drive outside the case on a mat. This time
everything worked. I booted it to the floppy no less than 10 times with
no
problem (taking this floppy out and putting it back in - rebooting by
power
off, reset and CTRL-ALT-DEL).

I booted up into Win2k and using Nero I was now able to make my boot CD
from
this floppy. I did this multiple times.

I then repeated this whole process a few times removing the floppy from
the
drive bay (but still having it attached) and then putting it back in. I
even removed it from the case out the front still leaving the cables
attached so I wouldn't have to remove and reattach the floppy cables as
that
could theoretically be another source of error. Every time when the
floppy
drive was in the case it wouldn't work but when it was outside the case it
would.

Couldn't believe it!

Finally, with the floppy drive installed in the drive bay, I turned up the
fan controllers of the two intake fans all the way and NOW I was able to
use
Nero to successfully create the boot CD from the boot floppy.

I did this test multiple times. When I turned the two (front) fan
controllers all the way up the floppy always worked but when I turned it
all
the way down it always failed. It seems to fail even if the fan
controllers
half way but does work if its about 2/3 way.

Then I tried turning the other two fan controllers all the way down with
the
intake fan controllers all the way up. This worked fine. But when I
turned
one of the intake fan controllers all the way down the floppy failed.
Here's
a table:
The first four columns are the settings of fan controller 1 through 4
respectively (values: B - bottom power, T - Top Power, H - Half Power, 2 -
2/3 Power). The fifth column is whether the floppy drive failed (values:
F - failed, W - worked)

B B T T F
T T B B W
B B H H F
2 2 H H W
B T H H W
T B H H W
T B B B F

Conclusion:
So clearly, there is a problem related to the Vantec Fan controller
controlling these fans but after that I don't know what to say. The
tests
"B B T T F" and "T T B B W" indicate that the problem is context dependant
on which fans are being controlled. Specifically, turning the first two
fans, the ones close to the floppy drive, down will create a floppy failed
while turning down the other two fans may not. However "T B H H W" and "T
B
B B F" indicate that the problem is NOT related to those two close intake
fans because they were set the same in both tests but setting the far two
fans low caused a failure.

Ummm.

Below is the email I just received from Vantec. They essentially claim that
its a fluke (1/100 case) and that I should be fine as long as I don't put
the device underneath the floppy drive. (Reminds me of the old joke where
the patient complains to the Dr. that his arm hurts. After hearing that the
patient has no insurance the Dr. tells the patient not to lift up his arm.)

So, anyone want to try this and test the "1 in a 100" theory. I'm tempted
to pick another one up at Frys to see what happens. I can always return
it.


-------- Vantec Response ----------

Andrew,

Here is the situation. We had our engineers overseas run some tests as
well. According to them, they set up 100 test cases. Of those 100, 1
failed. On the one that failed, the inductors were directly below the
read/write head of the floppy drive. In other similar test cases, the same
error did not occur. Also, we had one failure using a device we took out of
RMA. On subsequent units, we could not reproduce the same failure.

With this in mind, here are your options. (1) You can simply move the
NXP-205 into the top 3.5" slot, thus eliminating the situation where the
inductors could effect any device. (2) You can try to shield the top of the
NXP-205 yourself. (3) We can perform an RMA for you.

If you choose the third option, you will need to fill out the RMA form and
send a fax or e-mail of it back to us, along with a copy of the invoice. We
will then issue you an RMA number for you to send the device back.

Again, while this is certainly an issue, it seems to be a very rare case.
As for the fans, you might consider the UV LED fans we offer. The noise
level is a respectable 34dBA with a 36CFM rating.

Thank you for choosing Vantec.

"Andrew Diamond" wrote in message
. ..
Response from Vantec (originally they couldn't reproduce the problem.)
Andrew,

Correction, we let the test run for a while longer and the disk did become
corrupt. This is a very startling issue that has NEVER come up before.
Which is amazing since the NXP-205 is not new to the market. I will run
more tests tomorrow and hopefully come up with something more conclusive.
We have also contacted our engineers to see if they have a response. I
also
requested that readings be made on emissions. I will keep you informed.

Thank you for choosing Vantec.

"Andrew Diamond" wrote in message
. ..
My thesis, which will sound nutty, is the following: The use of my
Vantec
Fan Controller to turn down the speed of my two intake 80mm case fans
causes
my floppy drive to fail. I will defend this below but now for the
setup,
pathology, and history.

Setup:
I recently installed a Vantec Silver Nexus NXP-205 Rheobus (with 4 fan
controllers) in my Kingwin K11 case. This case comes with 4 80mm fans
two
of which are intake fans that sit at the bottom front of the machine.
Not
much above these fans is the 3.5 inch drive external bays. The bottom
bay
contains my Vantec fan controller and the one immediately above that has
my
floppy drive. These two intake fans, that are close to the floppy
drive,
are attached to the first two of the 4 fan speed controllers. The other
two
controllers are attached to the other two distant case fans but
apparently
have no effect adverse on my floppy drive (regardless of how I set their
speed controllers).

History/pathology:
The two intake fans are the loudest. I experimented with turning their
speed down by setting their fan controllers to the lowest setting and
noticing that the system temperature was not adversely effected (even
though
it was clear from the noise attenuation that the fans turned much much
slower). I don't use my floppy drive much but eventually, over a few
weeks,
when I did I noticed it behaved erratically. I did not think for a
moment
that these two things were related. Specifically, some boot floppies (3
different ones) wouldn't boot almost all of the time. I thought the
floppies were bad but they booted in other machines.

I decided to quickly bypass this problem by making a boot CD from the
floppy, one that same computer because it had the burner, using Nero CD
burner, but when I tried that it couldn't read the files from the floppy
or
of that floppy's copy. I tried this multiple times.

To me, from my experience, this indicated that the floppy drive was
probably
bad (versus the motherboard or the cable).

However, when I swapped the floppy with that from another computer the
supposedly bad floppy drive worked great.

So, I figured it must be the floppy cable but when I tried the original
floppy cable with the original floppy drive on the second computer it
still
worked great!

Maybe a bad MB, hard to believe, so now I was confused so I reattached
that
cable and floppy to my original machine but I decided, really out of
laziness, to leave the floppy drive outside the case on a mat. This
time
everything worked. I booted it to the floppy no less than 10 times with
no
problem (taking this floppy out and putting it back in - rebooting by
power
off, reset and CTRL-ALT-DEL).

I booted up into Win2k and using Nero I was now able to make my boot CD
from
this floppy. I did this multiple times.

I then repeated this whole process a few times removing the floppy from
the
drive bay (but still having it attached) and then putting it back in. I
even removed it from the case out the front still leaving the cables
attached so I wouldn't have to remove and reattach the floppy cables as
that
could theoretically be another source of error. Every time when the
floppy
drive was in the case it wouldn't work but when it was outside the case
it
would.

Couldn't believe it!

Finally, with the floppy drive installed in the drive bay, I turned up
the
fan controllers of the two intake fans all the way and NOW I was able to
use
Nero to successfully create the boot CD from the boot floppy.

I did this test multiple times. When I turned the two (front) fan
controllers all the way up the floppy always worked but when I turned it
all
the way down it always failed. It seems to fail even if the fan
controllers
half way but does work if its about 2/3 way.

Then I tried turning the other two fan controllers all the way down with
the
intake fan controllers all the way up. This worked fine. But when I
turned
one of the intake fan controllers all the way down the floppy failed.
Here's
a table:
The first four columns are the settings of fan controller 1 through 4
respectively (values: B - bottom power, T - Top Power, H - Half Power,
2 -
2/3 Power). The fifth column is whether the floppy drive failed
(values:
F - failed, W - worked)

B B T T F
T T B B W
B B H H F
2 2 H H W
B T H H W
T B H H W
T B B B F

Conclusion:
So clearly, there is a problem related to the Vantec Fan controller
controlling these fans but after that I don't know what to say. The
tests
"B B T T F" and "T T B B W" indicate that the problem is context
dependant
on which fans are being controlled. Specifically, turning the first two
fans, the ones close to the floppy drive, down will create a floppy
failed
while turning down the other two fans may not. However "T B H H W" and
"T
B
B B F" indicate that the problem is NOT related to those two close
intake
fans because they were set the same in both tests but setting the far
two
fans low caused a failure.

Ummm.

Yes, that's true. That wasn't fair of me. It's hard to imagine what other
options they could've provided.
However, in my gut I feel that this device has a design flaw and I suspect
I'm not 1 out of 100. I also think the suggestion of just changing its
position w/r to the floppy drive is a little cavalier. Who's to say how
much EMI we're talking about, for my specific unit, and what effect that
could have on other components. Data loss, like pain in general, is so much
easier to deal with when its someone elses.

"Never anonymous Bud" wrote in message
...
Separating himself from Baghdad Bob, "Andrew Diamond" whined:

Below is the email I just received from Vantec. They essentially claim
that
its a fluke (1/100 case) and that I should be fine as long as I don't put
the device underneath the floppy drive. (Reminds me of the old joke
where
the patient complains to the Dr. that his arm hurts. After hearing that
the
patient has no insurance the Dr. tells the patient not to lift up his
arm.)

I don't see how you came to that conclusion.

They offered you 3 options, one being to return the unit.

I'd say they did more than necessary to help.






To reply by email, remove the XYZ.

Lumber Cartel (tinlc) #2063. Spam this account at your own risk.

It's your SIG, say what you want to say....

I bought another NXP-205 from a different vendor and the same problem
occurred. I don't think this is an RMA / individual unit issue. Seems like
a design flaw.

"Never anonymous Bud" wrote in message
...
Separating himself from Baghdad Bob, "Andrew Diamond" whined:

Below is the email I just received from Vantec. They essentially claim
that
its a fluke (1/100 case) and that I should be fine as long as I don't put
the device underneath the floppy drive. (Reminds me of the old joke
where
the patient complains to the Dr. that his arm hurts. After hearing that
the
patient has no insurance the Dr. tells the patient not to lift up his
arm.)

I don't see how you came to that conclusion.

They offered you 3 options, one being to return the unit.

I'd say they did more than necessary to help.






To reply by email, remove the XYZ.

Lumber Cartel (tinlc) #2063. Spam this account at your own risk.

It's your SIG, say what you want to say....

I bought another NXP-205 from a different vendor and the same problem
occurred. I don't think this is an RMA / individual unit issue. Seems like
a design flaw.

"Andrew Diamond" wrote in message
. ..
My thesis, which will sound nutty, is the following: The use of my Vantec
Fan Controller to turn down the speed of my two intake 80mm case fans
causes
my floppy drive to fail. I will defend this below but now for the
setup,
pathology, and history.

Setup:
I recently installed a Vantec Silver Nexus NXP-205 Rheobus (with 4 fan
controllers) in my Kingwin K11 case. This case comes with 4 80mm fans two
of which are intake fans that sit at the bottom front of the machine. Not
much above these fans is the 3.5 inch drive external bays. The bottom bay
contains my Vantec fan controller and the one immediately above that has
my
floppy drive. These two intake fans, that are close to the floppy drive,
are attached to the first two of the 4 fan speed controllers. The other
two
controllers are attached to the other two distant case fans but apparently
have no effect adverse on my floppy drive (regardless of how I set their
speed controllers).

History/pathology:
The two intake fans are the loudest. I experimented with turning their
speed down by setting their fan controllers to the lowest setting and
noticing that the system temperature was not adversely effected (even
though
it was clear from the noise attenuation that the fans turned much much
slower). I don't use my floppy drive much but eventually, over a few
weeks,
when I did I noticed it behaved erratically. I did not think for a moment
that these two things were related. Specifically, some boot floppies (3
different ones) wouldn't boot almost all of the time. I thought the
floppies were bad but they booted in other machines.

I decided to quickly bypass this problem by making a boot CD from the
floppy, one that same computer because it had the burner, using Nero CD
burner, but when I tried that it couldn't read the files from the floppy
or
of that floppy's copy. I tried this multiple times.

To me, from my experience, this indicated that the floppy drive was
probably
bad (versus the motherboard or the cable).

However, when I swapped the floppy with that from another computer the
supposedly bad floppy drive worked great.

So, I figured it must be the floppy cable but when I tried the original
floppy cable with the original floppy drive on the second computer it
still
worked great!

Maybe a bad MB, hard to believe, so now I was confused so I reattached
that
cable and floppy to my original machine but I decided, really out of
laziness, to leave the floppy drive outside the case on a mat. This time
everything worked. I booted it to the floppy no less than 10 times with
no
problem (taking this floppy out and putting it back in - rebooting by
power
off, reset and CTRL-ALT-DEL).

I booted up into Win2k and using Nero I was now able to make my boot CD
from
this floppy. I did this multiple times.

I then repeated this whole process a few times removing the floppy from
the
drive bay (but still having it attached) and then putting it back in. I
even removed it from the case out the front still leaving the cables
attached so I wouldn't have to remove and reattach the floppy cables as
that
could theoretically be another source of error. Every time when the
floppy
drive was in the case it wouldn't work but when it was outside the case it
would.

Couldn't believe it!

Finally, with the floppy drive installed in the drive bay, I turned up the
fan controllers of the two intake fans all the way and NOW I was able to
use
Nero to successfully create the boot CD from the boot floppy.

I did this test multiple times. When I turned the two (front) fan
controllers all the way up the floppy always worked but when I turned it
all
the way down it always failed. It seems to fail even if the fan
controllers
half way but does work if its about 2/3 way.

Then I tried turning the other two fan controllers all the way down with
the
intake fan controllers all the way up. This worked fine. But when I
turned
one of the intake fan controllers all the way down the floppy failed.
Here's
a table:
The first four columns are the settings of fan controller 1 through 4
respectively (values: B - bottom power, T - Top Power, H - Half Power, 2 -
2/3 Power). The fifth column is whether the floppy drive failed (values:
F - failed, W - worked)

B B T T F
T T B B W
B B H H F
2 2 H H W
B T H H W
T B H H W
T B B B F

Conclusion:
So clearly, there is a problem related to the Vantec Fan controller
controlling these fans but after that I don't know what to say. The
tests
"B B T T F" and "T T B B W" indicate that the problem is context dependant
on which fans are being controlled. Specifically, turning the first two
fans, the ones close to the floppy drive, down will create a floppy failed
while turning down the other two fans may not. However "T B H H W" and "T
B
B B F" indicate that the problem is NOT related to those two close intake
fans because they were set the same in both tests but setting the far two
fans low caused a failure.

Ummm.

Arts and crafts:
I cut out a piece of thin cardboard (from some product box) that fit into
the fan enclosure. Took a piece of aluminum foil and thickened it by
folding it 2 or 3 times and then trimmed it to the same size as the
cardboard. Taped the aluminum foil to the cardboard and taped the whole
thing to the outside of the fan enclosure. The floppy drive can now read
fine even if all 4 fans are turned all the way down.
Notes
1) Cardboard was used to prevent the possibility of shorting out the
electronics given that the aluminum foil could sag and touch the fan
controller's electronics.
2) I trimmed everything to fit into the enclosure rather than rest on top of
it because otherwise I couldn't get the whole thing to fit into the bay
(because the aluminum foil would catch on the case bay guides).
3) Bottom line - I should've used real metal (I don't have any handy) and a
soldering iron. But it works and if it ain't broke.

"Andrew Diamond" wrote in message
. ..
My thesis, which will sound nutty, is the following: The use of my Vantec
Fan Controller to turn down the speed of my two intake 80mm case fans
causes
my floppy drive to fail. I will defend this below but now for the
setup,
pathology, and history.

Setup:
I recently installed a Vantec Silver Nexus NXP-205 Rheobus (with 4 fan
controllers) in my Kingwin K11 case. This case comes with 4 80mm fans two
of which are intake fans that sit at the bottom front of the machine. Not
much above these fans is the 3.5 inch drive external bays. The bottom bay
contains my Vantec fan controller and the one immediately above that has
my
floppy drive. These two intake fans, that are close to the floppy drive,
are attached to the first two of the 4 fan speed controllers. The other
two
controllers are attached to the other two distant case fans but apparently
have no effect adverse on my floppy drive (regardless of how I set their
speed controllers).

History/pathology:
The two intake fans are the loudest. I experimented with turning their
speed down by setting their fan controllers to the lowest setting and
noticing that the system temperature was not adversely effected (even
though
it was clear from the noise attenuation that the fans turned much much
slower). I don't use my floppy drive much but eventually, over a few
weeks,
when I did I noticed it behaved erratically. I did not think for a moment
that these two things were related. Specifically, some boot floppies (3
different ones) wouldn't boot almost all of the time. I thought the
floppies were bad but they booted in other machines.

I decided to quickly bypass this problem by making a boot CD from the
floppy, one that same computer because it had the burner, using Nero CD
burner, but when I tried that it couldn't read the files from the floppy
or
of that floppy's copy. I tried this multiple times.

To me, from my experience, this indicated that the floppy drive was
probably
bad (versus the motherboard or the cable).

However, when I swapped the floppy with that from another computer the
supposedly bad floppy drive worked great.

So, I figured it must be the floppy cable but when I tried the original
floppy cable with the original floppy drive on the second computer it
still
worked great!

Maybe a bad MB, hard to believe, so now I was confused so I reattached
that
cable and floppy to my original machine but I decided, really out of
laziness, to leave the floppy drive outside the case on a mat. This time
everything worked. I booted it to the floppy no less than 10 times with
no
problem (taking this floppy out and putting it back in - rebooting by
power
off, reset and CTRL-ALT-DEL).

I booted up into Win2k and using Nero I was now able to make my boot CD
from
this floppy. I did this multiple times.

I then repeated this whole process a few times removing the floppy from
the
drive bay (but still having it attached) and then putting it back in. I
even removed it from the case out the front still leaving the cables
attached so I wouldn't have to remove and reattach the floppy cables as
that
could theoretically be another source of error. Every time when the
floppy
drive was in the case it wouldn't work but when it was outside the case it
would.

Couldn't believe it!

Finally, with the floppy drive installed in the drive bay, I turned up the
fan controllers of the two intake fans all the way and NOW I was able to
use
Nero to successfully create the boot CD from the boot floppy.

I did this test multiple times. When I turned the two (front) fan
controllers all the way up the floppy always worked but when I turned it
all
the way down it always failed. It seems to fail even if the fan
controllers
half way but does work if its about 2/3 way.

Then I tried turning the other two fan controllers all the way down with
the
intake fan controllers all the way up. This worked fine. But when I
turned
one of the intake fan controllers all the way down the floppy failed.
Here's
a table:
The first four columns are the settings of fan controller 1 through 4
respectively (values: B - bottom power, T - Top Power, H - Half Power, 2 -
2/3 Power). The fifth column is whether the floppy drive failed (values:
F - failed, W - worked)

B B T T F
T T B B W
B B H H F
2 2 H H W
B T H H W
T B H H W
T B B B F

Conclusion:
So clearly, there is a problem related to the Vantec Fan controller
controlling these fans but after that I don't know what to say. The
tests
"B B T T F" and "T T B B W" indicate that the problem is context dependant
on which fans are being controlled. Specifically, turning the first two
fans, the ones close to the floppy drive, down will create a floppy failed
while turning down the other two fans may not. However "T B H H W" and "T
B
B B F" indicate that the problem is NOT related to those two close intake
fans because they were set the same in both tests but setting the far two
fans low caused a failure.

Ummm.