Yes, it's true -- I still have lots of floppy disks. But then, I'm also very old - like 77 y.o.! I also have an IBM ThinkPad USB floppy disk drive, BUT when I attach it to a laptop using a Linux distro, Linux doesn't even 'see' the floppy!

Are there some tricks that I have to use to get Xenial75 or Mint to access my USB floppy drive?

I'd appreciate some enlightenment on this matter. Thanks!

You might learn something by doing this:

Insert a floppy into the drive, then run the command fdisk -l as root. Let us know whether the device shows up in the output of the command.

Are you using a root level account to do tasks?

Some of that old floppy support has been removed from some modern distros. Top it off you have a usb attached.

I'd get an old Knoppix cd like maybe v4 or v5 maybe to try.

Anyway see these for clues.

https://wiki.debian.org/Floppy

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Floppy_disks

https://fitzcarraldoblog.wordpress.c...rive-in-linux/

floppycontrol man pages too.
Might end up using dd to save the floppy off to a file on working system.

I used to mount mine manually....

Connect it, may need to before booting, & put a floppy in it, then try,
(If I remember rightly.)

For FRANKBELL:

I am sending the results of "root# sudo fdisk -l" done on two separate laptops for your inspection. I don't believe the USB floppy got seen in both caases.

I trust that the attachments may reveal some good news, but my fingers are crossed!

Attached Files

	results_on_Linux+WinXP.txt (4.9 KB, 105 views)
	results_on_IBM.txt (5.2 KB, 65 views)

For FATMAC:

Here is what I got:

root# sudo mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
mount-FULL: special device /dev/fd0 does not exist
root#

The results aren't very reassuring are they?

/dev/fd0 only specific to the original internal floppy disk drive. As posted many distributions have deprecated/removed the floppy module or at least not load it by default. Are you trying an internal drive in addition to the USB? I know that Ubuntu has removed the floppy module and so would assume that Mint as will as Xenial will probably not have it either. A USB drive should still be supported.

If I remember correctly the USB floppy drive device ID would still be /dev/sdx. look at the output of the lsusb command to see if the drive is recognized as well as the output of the dmesg command i.e.
tail -n 20 dmesg

Is a disk inserted into the USB drive? fdisk will not output anything specific to the drive without a disk inserted. Are you sure the drive is operational and that you have some good disks?

1 members found this post helpful.

For michaelk:

Thanks for the info! Neither of my laptops have original floppy disk drives. When I plug the external USB floppy along with a known floppy disk, a green LED flickers briefly on the floppy case, but that's the only response I am getting. There is no access to the floppy itself.

I will use your suggestions and redo the queries on both the IBM ThinkPad & the HP-Mini dual boot Linux Xenial75&WIN XP to see what results I'll get. Having done that, I'll report back.

Many thanks for the details.

For michaelk:

The attached file gives the results of the 2 commands you provided. Both results included mention of the TEAC device. However, there was no 'sdx' icon showing at the bottom of my Xenial75 desktop.

Also typing the command "tail -n 20 dmesg" (as I saw in your previous post) gave me this result:

root# tail -n 20 dmesg
tail: can't open 'dmesg': No such file or directory
tail: no files
root#


Here are the details of the IBM Portable Diskette Drive:

TEAC Corp. Model No. FD-05PUB
P/N 19308803-79

Hope all this may provide some food for thought!

Attached Files

michaelk-2.txt (43.3 KB, 63 views)

As above, most distros probably have removed floppy disk modules - so, maybe, grab an old version of a distro to use to access your floppies(?). Prior to 2019, it would appear - https://techreport.com/news/3464145/...drive-support/

For fatmac: Your observation is most astute. I've read the suggested URL, but have no idea where one obtains old-enough distros to potentially do the job I would like to do.

Might you be able to provide some potential candidates and where they can be downloaded from?

I'll check in again on Saturday morning. Many thanks!

The USB floppy drive does not use the hardware floppy driver. No need to find and old distribution.

Output from lsusb:
It is recognized just like a any other USB drive however if I am reading dmesg output correctly either the drive or presently inserted disk is bad or blank.
[/quote]

you were supposed to run the command "dmesg" (which can be run as a regular user) right after plugging in the floppy to the usb port, and look at the output to see what the system identifies when it is attached. It looks like that is the 3rd part you posted.

You will not see the device on your desktop until it is actually mounted with readable media. look at the content of /dev before you plug in the drive to know what the system already sees. Then after plugging it in look at /dev again to see what is new. The output of dmesg also should show the device name the system adds for it.

Your posted output shows the device is seen and recognized (probably as /dev/sdb) so there is no need to try any different distro (older or whatever). All you need to do is the following:
1. look at the difference in /dev to see what device is created.
2. insert a readable floppy into the drive
3. Now with your file manager (I use nautilus on fedora but YMMV) you should be able to see the disk. If not then you may need to mount the disk manually. (sudo mount /dev/deviceidentified /mount/point). On my system the dvdrom is not seen as an /dev/sdX device but rather /dev/sr0. I suspect the floppy drive is the device identified as /dev/sdb from your output. When you insert a disk it will likely be seen as /dev/sdb1. Thus the mount command (if I am right) would be "sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt".
Fedora automatically mounts removable media (flash drives, etc) at /run/media/username/devicename and your system may do similar if the disk is already in the drive when you plug it in to the USB port.

Readable media in the floppy should be handled similar to the content of USB flash drives. You may need to manually mount/umount the floppy disk when inserting it and removing it.

This is quite backward as dmesg is a utility program and not a file. It should be

or slightly more complex:

This takes into account the fact that dmesg is a process and not a file.