Is there such a thing as a Win98SE USB floppy drive driver for T20 series?

I think one of my T22s (figures it's the only 1GHz one i have and it is the only SXGA+ screen as well!) has a bad floppy controller or Ultrabay interface, because I can't seem to be able to boot a w98 startup disk to re-write the MBR.

It seeks all over creation then says file after file is missing or corrupt, but the same diskette and drive work fine in a T30.....

I was able to boot from a USB floppy drive and it read the same disk fine and i wrote the MBR (and now the machine a least boots the HDD) but then Win98 complains about the "new hardware" and can't find a driver, because there isn't one on the computer. Drive A shows up but the system can't read it. I can slide the FDD into the Ultrabay, and that became drive B: which at least read the directory, but that's a bit kludgy. I will try to copy the files from the floppy drive to a temp directory to see how that goes.

I'll also try the FDD in my known good T22, and see if it gives any problems.
I remember having trouble writing the BIOS on the 1GHz machine, because i updated all my T22 BOIS' and the 1 GHz was the only one that didn't want to work, so I may have a bad ultrabay interface in that T22.

Let me see how a HDD partition copy does later as well, that should be interesting if the interface is bad. A DVD movie play may aso test the ultrabay interface.

How hard are the FDD or ulrtrabay controllers to change out? I have a T21 and some T22s that i could swap with, if its bad and i can figure out how to change it...

I have an official "IBM USB Portable Diskette Drive" and a matching driver-CD with P/N 22P7069.
It contains MS drivers for W98 and W95.
Put in a zip-file, it's only 141KB.
PM me with an email address.

Alternatively, for cost of postage I can send you an UB2000 floppy drive.

Thanks RBS, I'll look for the zip file when i get off duty.

I have three ultrabay floppy drives (only 1 here with me) The one i have seems to work fine in two different T30s and i think it's fine in my other T22s. I'll make some checks.

I'm really thinking either a bad ultrabay interface (have not really done anything else with this 1 GHZ T22 yet) or a bad FDD controller. This T22 seems to have a dead CMOS battery as well.....

That of course would suck since this is the only 1 GHz T22 i have and i wanted to use it as a machine for old DOS / winblows games, but it didn't cost too much, so...

Interesting thing is i can boot from a USB floppy and execute DOS tasks like FDISK and recovery partition repair, etc no problem...

Things that make you go hmmmm...

I also have 2 of the IBM special cables to connect to the parallel port (and 1 or 2 of the little adapters to connect to the dock port (I have 2 of the ThinkPad T2x / T30 docks), so I now can boot my T2xs and T30s in a variety of ways.

Still have not completely isolated the recalcitrant T22s issue. cloned a HDD tonite with no apparent errors. I also disk-copied the startup disk that the T22 would not read - no read errors.

On the other hand the ibm restore partition recovery diskette booted in the T22 ok and ran the IBM MBR update.

I'm at a loss, but will keep trying to isolate the problem.

I would start with replacing the CMOS battery in that T22.
The BIOS does not function properly without it.

I actually brought my spare CMOS batteries with me so i'll change it out.

That diskcopy i made was on one of my T30s, but it was off a W98 startup disk that the T22 would not read...

That cloning operation worked fine, i started up an old DOs game off the D drive with no issues. I'll be happy if it's just the CMOS battery.

Then i need to find the SXGA+ video driver, because the screen looks real bad with a 1024x768 on that high resolution screen.