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[The_Lemming]

As my dad and I went through our garage recently, we came upon 4 boxes of old computer hardware and software, as well as two old computers! We decided to begin an experiment in computer nostalgia and attempt to load original DOS.

When we booted the computer, it seemed to work fine. The CPU was OK, and it found its primary master and slave hard disks. Then it made a really odd clicking noise as it attempted to read from the hard disk, and it then said:

"Primary master hard disk fail"

We managed to boot to the hard disk install floppy, and found that the hard drive had gone bad. We replaced it, and made the other hard disk the primary master. It worked. Hooray! DOS at last! Until the next time we booted to attempt to install DOS:

"Floppy disks fail (40)"

NOOOOOOOO!!!

So then we replaced the floppy drive with the one from the other computer, and at last got a DOS prompt. Yes!

But what does "Floppy disks fail (40)" mean? Is there a way to salvage that floppy drive?

P.S. We blew out the floppy drive with one of those cans of compressed air just before it failed. Could that have caused it somehow?