[Leaplist] Floppy problem in Lenny - Debian-Cecil

[Jim Hartley]

Let me just throw some brainstorming into this mess, based on (real 
reliable!) what I think I remember hearing somewhere.

Windoze uses BIOS functions, while Linux (at least for some things) does 
NOT use BIOS, it talks directly to the hardware. Let us suppose that the 
floppy is one such case. And let us suppose - sheer blue-sky speculation 
- that on this particular mobo, the actual physical floppy drive has 
some weird interface (USB or something?), but the BIOS **translates** 
this so that it looks like a normal floppy to Windoze. Linux ignores the 
BIOS and goes looking for a floppy drive connected by the "normal" 
(i.e., oldstyle mobo) interface, and it can't find anything there - no 
file system, no data, nothing.

I know this sounds pretty far out, but it does fit the symptoms 
described. OK, guys, throw rocks, shoot holes in this ... but does 
anybody have a BETTER idea?

Oh, if you really need a floppy on that box, go blow $30 on one of those 
USB-connected external floppy drives, might save on the hair-tearing!

Jim Hartley

Whit Hansell wrote:
> Well, this is getting to be really fun.  I've downloaded Knoppix 5.1 
> and it verifies w. the md5 code.  I have tried to put in on a cd 6 or 
> 7 times.  The first time I did it, it said it could not find the 
> knoppix operating system when it booted up.  So I rebooted and hit F2 
> and it came up just fine.  But as it was checking out hdw on the run 
> up it did not mention fd0, floppy or anything like that.  But it did 
> come up and put a floppy icon on the desktop so I put in a DOS 
> formatted floppy and hit the icon and it came up that it could not 
> determine the filesystem.  Same old thing again.  So I went to 
> terminal and tried to do a mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 and 
> it came up that it could not access the drive again.  I don't remember 
> the exact message there but it said to do the dmesg | tail check again 
> and so I did and it came up w. could not find filesystem again.  Well, 
> shoot.  It was a 2.6.19 kernel image and so I wondered if the cd was 
> hosed so I rebooted and did a knoppix test to see if there were any 
> errors on the cd.   Tons showed up and after that I could not get it 
> to load again so I tossed it and have tried to make more using verify 
> on K3b and no joy.  It gets to the verify and says there are no tracks 
> to verify.   I have also tried to make them straight across w/o 
> verification and when I try them out it comes up that it can't find 
> the operating system after it has done it's hdware checks, again w/o a 
> floppy showing up on the hardware list each time.  And I've not been 
> able to get it to come up since using the current 5.1 .iso.  I tried 
> an older 3.4 Knoppix and it came up fine but when I tried to format or 
> mount a floppy, same old stuff.  On this one the format just hung and 
> the mount said the mount point was not accurate.  So I checked the 
> mount point in fstab and used that one and it said the link went 
> nowhere.  I checked the actual link and they were right.  It went to a 
> file /mount/auto/floppy.  Well, it almost all existed.  There was a 
> mount/auto but no floppy.  I'm getting really exasperated now.  I 
> popped in an old Ubuntu Live CD and it just wasn't even set up to mess 
> w. it as far as I could see.  Kfloppy formatter was in the menu list 
> so I tried that w. no joy.  It came up w. an error message which 
> basically stated it could not find something.  I figured if it 
> couldn't find it it wasn't there and I wasn't going to go hunting for 
> it either and gave up on that.  I don't remember what it was and by 
> that time I really didn't care.   I  just think God does not want me 
> to have a working floppy on this box using Linux.  What else can I think?
>
> So, anyway, I think I'm going to reformat that other drive w. Lenny 
> and see if it comes up w. the floppy available or not.  I've done more 
> installations of Debian using the netinstall, I'm getting used to it 
> by  now.  I jsust hate ot have to re-set up the other drive w. all the 
> stuff I've got on this box.  Oh well.  Right now I'm going to go fix 
> dinner and get back to this in a little while.
>
> Thanks everyone, again.
> Whit
>
>
>
>
> Whit Hansell wrote:
>> Hmmmm....
>> Not yet.   I'll try it now.  I don't have the latest Knoppix yet but 
>> am on my way.
>>
>> Thanks.
>> Whit
>>
>> Cecil Hornbaker wrote:
>>> Whit,
>>>
>>> Have you tried booting with a recent debian based live cd (knoppix,
>>> ubuntu, etc) to see if it can access the drive?  This is a technique
>>> I've used to troubleshoot X Window configuration problems.
>>>
>>> Cecil
>>>
> <snip>
>
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