Floppy Drive 5 1/4... old ms-dos!??
 

is there any way i can mount this floppy drive!??
is a really old floppy drive...

I recompile my kernel 2.6.7 with all filesystems and IBM XT support
but i always get this when the OS is trying to read the disk....

# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/
/dev/fd0: Invalid argument
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

btw, i got the drive from my old computer.... (actually my first pc...)
you know... monocrome monitor, no HDD only two 5 1/4 FDD... etc...


Regards,

You could try the following:
- check the output of "dmesg"; here you find which devices are recognized at boot time
- check if bios settings are OK for this drive (some people actually forget this when they install other drives...)
- Is floppy disk support enabled in the kernel? (think it's somewhere under block device drivers in the menu)
- is the /dev/fd0 special file present? Since you get this "invalid arg." message, maybe it's missing...

Good luck!
nukkel

dmesg output:
...
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
...
microcode: No suitable data for cpu 0
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
parport0: irq 7 detected
inserting floppy driver for 2.6.7
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.2M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
...

BIOS Settings.... i did check'em twice... now a third time...!!

/dev/fd0 special file present... i guess it is because it reads
the disk but it won't mount it because of the block device
error.....

i believe the floppy is supported in the kernel... but i'm checking again...


any more ideas...!??\

Try using the non-autodetected fd device, that is, the /dev/fd0xxx ones. Take a look at them in /usr/src/linux-[VERSION]/Documentation/devices.txt

8 = /dev/fd?h1200 5.25" 1200K in a 1200K drive(1)


how can i mount it??
mount /dev/fd?h1200 /mnt/temp/
that doesn't work....

The '?' refers to the number of the drive. So, in your case the first drive: /dev/fd0h1200

i tryed, like you said... and no success i still get the same error...
do you know why this is happening!??

i mounted all of the fd0xxxx listed in the document....

I don't have an old floppy drive anymore, so I can only guess, sorry...

Um, does the drive's LED light up when you try mounting the disk? Or try dd'ing a few bytes out? Does it show any sign of activity?

Since it is very old, I somehow doubt your drive is gone... I don't know for sure though.

indeed it is a very old 5.25 drive...

when i try to mount the drive, the led turns on...
and then the shell gives me the error...

>> does the drive's LED light up when you try mounting the disk?
yes it does...
>> try dd'ing a few bytes out?
how do i do this!??
>> Does it show any sign of activity?
yes, it spins... when accessing the drive!!


btw, i forgot to mention that the cable that goes to the mb is not
a regular floppy one, the connector that goes to the M/B it does looks
like a floppy but at the other end it looks like a pci connector(not really)...
is this causing a problem!?? and on the old pc that i removed the drive
from it has all the pins on the floppy connector while my M/B(ASUS) is
missing one pin you know the standard...