laptop with malf floppy drive

[Finbogey Jones]

I have a 5 yr old Compaq laptop with a malfunctioning floppy drive.
The drive doesn't work, but it spins constatly, even when empty. This
is quite a drain on the battery and on CPU cyles, it seems, as it
slows down the machine.

The machine is otherwise still quite usable. Is it possible to
disconnect power to the drive (orphan it) and still use the machine?

I have looked through the setup options in the BIOS to see if there
was some way to just turn it off, but no luck.

Any help would be appreciated.


Grant

 

[kony]

I have a 5 yr old Compaq laptop with a malfunctioning floppy drive.
The drive doesn't work, but it spins constatly, even when empty. This
is quite a drain on the battery and on CPU cyles, it seems, as it
slows down the machine.

The machine is otherwise still quite usable. Is it possible to
disconnect power to the drive (orphan it) and still use the machine?

I have looked through the setup options in the BIOS to see if there
was some way to just turn it off, but no luck.

Any help would be appreciated.


Grant

I wouldn't put it past Compaq to mess up something this simple, but
you should be able to just unplug it and be done, perahps enter the
bios and save again if it complains. By unplug it, I mean the whole
drive.