I have a Win98 computer with a floppy disk shared on the network.
When I try to access the floppy from ubuntu 12.04 over the network
Nautilus sees the disk but none of the files on it.
If I right click and click properties ,It shows as type folder
and file system type cifs
It seems nautilus thinks it is a folder not a disk.
Files on Other shared folders on the same computer are assessable.
When I boot Windows8 I can see and open files on the same floppy.
Yes I know floppies are outmoded,and there is another way I can get the data off
it. I just like things to work!!

I did some more testing on this problem. I tried another floppy disk and
was able to see and read the files
It seems that if there are only a couple of small files on the disk,nautilus does
not see them,but if there is a large file it does.
This does not happen on shared folders only the floppy disk

And can you tell us what was in that folder? Did you open it? Did it contain the files you wanted?
jdk

most Operating systems will not even look for nor mount a 3.5 in floppy
and if this is a win98 computer running win98
it might be a 5 in floppy or( not likely) an older 8 in floppy


what is it
if it is a 5 inch "REALLY floppy" floppy in a paper sleeve you might not be able to use it


if it is a networked mounted "drive" it will be a folder

but you might have to tell the os it is a fat16 disk

Do other W98 shares work correctly?

File system type or not automatically loading the floppy module would typically be a linux problem and not windows. I do not remember sharing a floppy but I do remember sharing a CD without problems or at least I can not remember what they were.

Other alternatives would be to transfer the file via ftp to the linux PC. I can not vouch for this site but you can download file transfer applications for W98 if not already installed.

http://www.oldapps.com/category/file_transfers

I'd assume you shared the drive but not any of the files.

I've used this way a very long time ago, generally for cd's. A share is a share for the most part. I now forgot what it was. Share one part to everyone and configure permissions by user. Somewhere in the server 2003 series books.

If the network situation setup is:
Win98 share -> Linux server mount -> PC used for access
then there is a problem. The cifs mount on the Linux server will appear correct when viewed locally on the server, but will appear incorrect when viewed remotely. This is due to the differences between handling of hard links on Windows and Linux when directory information is accessed. There is a bug report with a patch to the cifs code that can get the remote viewing working, but it causes other problems. https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9346

Worse comes to worse you can make an image of the floppy and mount it on the ubuntu.

dd for windows or rawritewin would create a floppy image. (then you'd have to move the data). Send it up to an email account even and back to linux.

Could set up ftp server on windows 98.

The shared drive should work however. Easy enough to test share with any other folder or drive on windows 98.

Guess it could be spun down??? Doubt a restart is required or ntlm.??