I have just installed slackware 11 with huge26 only to find that my floppy does not work. I have repeated the installation a few times but always same result.

Here is my computer :-

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82440MX Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:00.1 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82440MX AC'97 Audio Controller
00:00.2 Modem: Intel Corporation 82440MX AC'97 Modem Controller
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Motion, Inc. SM710 LynxEM (rev a3)
00:03.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6836/6860 CardBus Controller (rev 62)
00:03.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6836/6860 CardBus Controller (rev 62)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82440MX ISA Bridge (rev 01)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82440MX EIDE Controller
00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82440MX USB Universal Host Controller
00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82440MX Power Management Controller


and here are a few extracts from dmesg :-

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
floppy0: no floppy controllers found

Probing IDE interface ide1...
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 9514260 sectors (4871 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=10068/15/63, UDMA(33)
hda: cache flushes not supported
hda: hda1 hda2
hdb: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide

Although an fd0 does appear in /dev I am constantly informed that it is not a valid block device.

I have installed the modules package from extra and a fair number get loaded but what am I missing?

John

this is likely a controller issue. perhaps the ide-floppy.o is not included in huge26 and is not loaded?

what modules are loaded? do you get anything from

modrobe -l | grep floppy

and

lsmod | grep floppy

also, dig around for the huge26.s kernel .config and try:

cat <path>/.config | grep FLOPPY

modprobe -l | grep floppy and lsmod | grep floppy gave nothing at all.

cat /boot/config | grep FLOPPY
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEFLOPPY=y



John

That's strange, mine doesn't seem to work either ... never tested it until now ... cuz I never use floppys.

I'm not using huge26.s tho, I built a custom kernel, but the same version as huge26.s.

so it is compiled in.. maybe its ATAPI? I read somewhere that ATAPI are not listed as /dev/fdX but will be like /dev/hdN+1 (where N=# of HD)
<edit> sorry, to clarify the N would be alpha (a,b etc..)
if thats true then the fstab entry may be pointing to the wrong device. probably the /media/floppy link too.

sorry, i can't offer anything better than that.

When I look in /dev I only see my hard disk and my cdrom.
When I boot up with a one floppy Linux based on 2.0.39 I get

hda: FUJITSU MHH2048AT, 4645MB w/512kB Cache, CHS=592/255/63
hdb: CD-224E, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077

and my floppy works well as fd0.

I will be trying the same installation on another computer to see what happens.

Is there anyone who has their floppy working on huge26 ?

Also I made a boot disk as requested during installation. This does not work either.
During installation I was informed that the boot disk had been successfully created.
How can you ever get huge26 on a floppy?

John

hmm... there is some /sbin/make-bootdisk script, though I have never used it.

Yes I have tried makebootdisk but that does not work either. It never finds the floppy drive.

John

sorry to keep posting with no real advice.. I'm curious if your system is hiding the floppy behind a 'transparent bridge'

does return something like "try pci=assign-busses" ? or what is the output of

dmesg | grep assign
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1

lspci -v | grep subordinate
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=04, sec-latency=176
Bus: primary=00, secondary=05, subordinate=08, sec-latency=176

John

that seems fishy to me.. AFAIK you should have subordinates for 2-7 also..

you could try append="pci=assign-busses"

could it be an irq issue? what about:

cat /proc/interrupts /proc/ioports

It probably is the irq. I see a lot of messages of type "probably wrong irq" at boot up.
Is there an HOWTO in Slackware about this? or is it a bios related problem ?

John

you can also try:

append="irqpoll" and/or pci=routeirq

(in lilo.conf)

I have not found (or looked to hard) for a slackware howto for it.. Onebuck, et. al. has that great list of links going (link to post in my sig). I have found the pci=assign-busses and irqpoll by googling for other (not floppy) hardware problems on various boxes.

I have never found a very good explanation for the irqpoll option.

Did you try assign-busses? if so did it change the ouput of lspci -v | grep subordinate ? iirc the bus assignment is required so that bus 0 (the processor) can see all the other busses, which may be stuck behind 'transparent bridges' which I think are just secondary and tertiary bus access controllers (the N/S bridges?) but each must have a path to the 0 else the kernel can not properly address them..

but i don't think thats the problem you're having..

Update:

Strangely, I just recompiled the kernel, and my floppy drive works. Not sure if this is what caused it. I also patched a number of things (Slackware security fixes).

The major thing I changed was:
to
so, the floppy as a module rather than built-in.

As I see, the huge26.s config here:
ftp://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub/...uge26.s/config

has
which is built-in.

perhaps compiling it as a module instead will fix the problem.

I took a semester and when I came back there was Slackware 12 and so I installed that. It was a default type of installation and I got an enormous kernel by the name of vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.21.5-smp. In spite of its enormous size my floppy still does not work. Same problems as above same computer as above.

Would any member of the forum be as kind as to post a few lines to tell me if their floppy works or does not work using any of the kernels provided as standard in Slackware 12?.

I will be trying the installation on other computers soon to see what I get.

Do I really have to get down to building my own kernel just to get a simple old floppy working in spite of all these enormous modern kernels when it works on an old kernel small enough to fit on a floppy?

John