Is the vfat module loaded? Try modprobe vfat

strange, i had RH8 and that worked for me... try changing the fstab line for floppy with:

dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto user,dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0

and then /mnt/floppy again
maybe you need to reboot?? (i don't think so)

Good news. I downgraded the kernel to 2.4.18-14 and was able to mount and use the floppy disk. I guess it is like the cdrecord problem with the 2.6.x kernels.