I dunno what the deal is...

paul@box:~$ sudo mount /dev/fd0 FLOPPY/ 2> floppyerr
Password:
paul@box:~$ cat floppyerr
mount: error while guessing filesystem type
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a block device (maybe try `-o loop'?)

dd direct to floppy sectors works fine and
drive works fine in windows,
so that kinda ruled out hardware issues

The same command executed under a Live run of Knoppix ( booted from cd)
works fine ...
so that leads me to a system problem, possible a configuration ???

Thankyou for any help
regards,

-paul-

What does the /dev/fd0 line look like in your /etc/fstab?

try specifying the filesystem.. like: mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /FLOPPY, for example...

When i was doing a bit of messing around with floppies i found that in many implementations the fd0 devices is only the kernels best guess at what the disk is, ie, you might need to access the correct type of floppy:
eg:/dev/fd0u144 for a normal 1.44mb disk.

Hope this helps.

bigrigdriver--

here's my fstab:

thanks for any clues

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda5 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda6 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# partitions found by Knoppix
#/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2 ntfs noauto,user,exec,rw,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
#/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 ext2 noauto,users,exec 0 0

Your fstab says
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat


usually a floppy will be mounted something like

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy vfat auto users.......ect.

auto if you want it to mount automatically
users if you want any user to mount it.
noauto if you don't want it auto mounted
ro for read only

If you want to mount it manually then something like

Make sure that the directory where you want to mount it exists
mkdir /mnt/floppy for example

mount -t /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy vfat auto users .....etc.

Read the man pages for mount
man mount
mount --help