I am trying to get the floppy drive to work on ubuntu 8.4 harding. I know it is something in bio but i can not remember what to do to activate it. If anyone can let me know that would be great

Take a look at this Here this is for slackware but still should apply to ubuntu. As for I'm guessing you mean bios if you've never disabled the floppy in your bios then it should be fine.

Wouldn't a jumpdrive be a better choice rather than a floppy disk?

WTF is a jumpdrive?
if a floppy drive is installed why not use it?

Jumpdrive

Or maybe I should have said flash drive?

Edit:

Nothing wrong with using a floppy drive, Its just floppy disks tend to go bad on a regular basis, and you only get 1.44mb of storage where as a jump/flash drives tend to be a bit more reliable and will/can store a bit more data.

try to use a flash drive to move data to and from an old 486

What the heck is a 486?

google it

Sometimes when it comes down to it you may need a floppy drive to boot your system. BIOS. So I aggree why not use it. Besides they are cheap.

LOL I have never in my life use a flash drive. If it was to big for a Floppy then it was a CD/DVD.

Sorry this post went of topic. I just wanted to say that.

I'd use a flash drive (jump drive) over a floppy drive anyday. For one they don't go bad over time and two i've seen sizes at 128GB (and probably larger). You can use it to boot your system, transfer all types of files. movies, music, and overall is just more convenient than a floppy.

i could never boot to them
and yes they do go bad : http://ask-leo.com/can_a_usb_thumbdrive_wear_out.html?

That was a very interesting post. I read your article

Well the last system I have ever seen that needed a floppy to boot into the Bios was a IBM ps2 386 They were outdated in 1995 or there abouts. I'm sure there are still some people that use them.

As for floppies being cheap they don't even compare to a flash drive, you can get a pack of 10 floppies for about $3.00 us dollars 3 packs will cost a little over $9.00 thats a total of 43.2mb of storage at .31 cents per 1.44mb of storage. A 2gb flash drive costs about $10.00 us dollars, thats about .005 cents per mb, so no a floppy is not cheap when you look at what your getting. To get the same amount of storage in floppy disks it would cost you a little over $400.00 dollars maybe a little cheaper if you buy packs of 50.

LOL in the long run very true. I've always used floppys to update my bios and stuff. So I never by no more than 1 pack for a very long time.

floppys started it all and are easy to work with and FYI flash drives that will last even as long as a floppy are not $10
you need to go $18+ unless you want it to break in a few weeks

Yeah that's true, that's I think the only thing I ever use them for anymore, but with the newer MBs though you can flash the bios with their GUI apps. 5 of my systems still have floppy drives so it's not like I don't have them to use. Anywho you are very right about this post getting off topic.