usb floppy drive

taizhu · 12-10-2002, 12:42 PM

Hi there,

I install Mandrake 9.0, it couldn't recognize my usb floppy. Anything I can do to configure it? Your help is high appreciate

Thymox · 12-10-2002, 12:44 PM

When you plug it in, does anything show up when you run usbview?

taizhu · 12-10-2002, 12:48 PM

yes, the usbview could detect it, but the linux system is not able to access it somehow

Thymox · 12-10-2002, 12:51 PM

But what shows up?

taizhu · 12-10-2002, 12:53 PM

I have to run usbview to see my floppy, but I don't know how to access to the floppy to run the software on it. There is no /mnt/floppy and /dev/floppy is empty

Thymox · 12-10-2002, 12:59 PM

Yeah... that is because the link for /dev/floppy is not made for the usb device... it is probably somewhere under /dev/usb... take a peek in there and post what you have in that directory.

taizhu · 12-10-2002, 01:08 PM

there is a /dev/usb/hid there, but the direcotry is empty

Thymox · 12-10-2002, 01:14 PM

Not sure if it'd work, but you could try:
modprobe usb-storage prior to trying to access anything.

taizhu · 12-10-2002, 01:21 PM

after I did it, the /dev/usb/hid is still empty. Looks it doesn't work

Thymox · 12-10-2002, 01:22 PM

Ooh... just found this:
http://mantscheff.net/linux-sony-vaio-floppy.htm
It seems a bit dated, but you could try the steps from point 2... load those modules in that order?

taizhu · 12-10-2002, 01:34 PM

great!!! my usb floopy is also sony. I will try and definitely let you know. Thank you a million.

taizhu · 12-12-2002, 10:54 AM

I made it.

First I download the usb driver from www.scyld.com/usb/usb.html#sourceRPM, installed in my computer. Second, I created a floppy directory: mkdir /mnt/floppy. Third, I mount my floppy: mount -t /dev/sda /mnt/floppy.

It works. Thank you all for the input.

Thymox · 12-12-2002, 11:00 AM

Congrats on getting it to work, but I don't think you necessarily needed to install that. Mandrake 9 comes with plenty of USB support anyway. Not to worry... it is working now.

taizhu · 12-12-2002, 11:14 AM

Thank you very much, Thymox.

My system is Mandrake 9, before I install the usb driver, my /dev/sda is empty. I couldn't mount my floppy somehow. I also tried the website you made, but could use 'make manuconfig', not sure what is going on.

pandasonic · 11-02-2003, 04:09 PM

Hey..... i'm running Red Hat 9 on a Toshiba Satellite Pro m15-s405... i tried my friend's Dell USB Floppy Drive and it kinda recognized it and all that because i was able to read and write on the diskette but for some reason when i ran the "Floppy Formatter" application i got this error message: Unable to open the device /dev/fd0, formatting cannot continue.
and well.. after i click 'Close' on the error message window it just closes the application and i'm left with empty hands.. can anynone help me?
thanks