also, i'm not sure what a ferrite bead looks like, or rather, what it looks like on an ST board

He means the inductors "L". They are in a row near the ports, on your image, they look like resistors "on end". I think they are zero ohm resistors used on later boards.spiny wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2017 11:21 am what is 'bead 224' ? is it something soldered to the board? can you point it out on the pics I posted ?
I marked the route. Looks like L224.
You should probably check from the connector to the L224 and make sure you have a connection there. Or at the very least, find the motor on signal between L224 and U14.spiny wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2017 10:24 pm well, I dug out my meter and for some reason i can't find continuity on any of the pins mentioned, L224 only seems to link to pin14 on U14 and i can't find any links from L224 to any of the floppy pins.