Maybe my logic is flawed, but hey, that's all I got. If you cant repair your current floppy drive by using a new fdd cable, or after cleaning it, don't WASTE money on a new one, and while sony would love everyone to continue using CD's we all know they scratch, break, or just suck. If in worst case scenario you have to buy something look at some zip drives. You can find a 100mb ZIP drive (maybe refurb) for what you'd spend on a new floppy, and zips won't demagnetize and loose info, or get scratched and make you resurface them. Since I got a 750mb zip drive I've had less headaches, and used cd's for nothing more than music. It's far more convenient to edit info than a cd, and when you compare 1.44mb to 100-750mb... do you really need to ponder that? It seems to me that someone had to work really really hard to see the FDD still in use today.
This is of course just my personal opinion, if your differs, you might try to ponder the issue more. j\k
If anything, hope you get that damn a: drive working, good luck.