floppy question (real not usb)

skippy1729 · 03-20-2016, 01:27 AM

Does Slackware have out of the box support for 1.44MB 3-1/2 inch floppy drive? Real one, not USB.

John VV · 03-20-2016, 01:38 AM

what version ?

most new kernels do not support a floppy
or
do but it is turned off and you need to manually run " modprobe floppy "and manually mount it

Code:

su -
modprobe floppy
mkdir /mnt/floppy
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

skippy1729 · 03-20-2016, 01:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

what version ?

most new kernels do not support a floppy
or
do but it is turned off and you need to manually run " modprobe floppy "and manually mount it

Code:

su -
modprobe floppy
mkdir /mnt/floppy
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

What version indeed?

I am OK with these commands to turn it on and mount it. How old a version do I have to get? I don't care about security concerns or the latest bells and whistles. I have some files that I really need to write to floppys.

willysr · 03-20-2016, 02:08 AM

we still have floppy package

Quote:

PACKAGE NAME: floppy-5.5-i486-1
COMPRESSED PACKAGE SIZE: 344K
UNCOMPRESSED PACKAGE SIZE: 810K
PACKAGE LOCATION: floppy-5.5-i486-1.txz
PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:
floppy: floppy (floppy disk utilities)
floppy:
floppy: Contains fdutils, tools to test and format floppy disks; and mtools,
floppy: a collection of utilities to access FAT disks without mounting them.

volkerdi · 03-20-2016, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skippy1729

Does Slackware have out of the box support for 1.44MB 3-1/2 inch floppy drive? Real one, not USB.

Yes. CONFIG_BLOCK_DEV_FD=y in all kernels.

MarcT · 03-24-2016, 01:32 PM

I've had problems using a real floppy drive with 64bit Linux kernels on my workstation (an older AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 based box) in the past. The same system used to dual boot 32bit Windows-XP which would handle the floppy drive just fine. Can't say I've tried recently with Kernel 3.10.17 in Slackware64 14.1, so it may have been fixed.

Trying to format a floppy with Kernel 2.6.33.3 (Slackware64-13.0 or 13.1) caused the following in "dmesg". The clocksource was not unstable until the format was attempted.

Code:

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
[...]
Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -144951798830 ns)
Switching to clocksource hpet
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 8
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 1
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 16
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 2
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 24
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 3
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 32
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 4
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 40
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 5
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 48
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 6
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 56
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 7
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 64
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 8
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 72
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 9
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 80
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 10
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 88
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 11
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 96
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 12
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 104
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 13
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 112
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 14
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 120
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 15
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0

The same floppy disk would format fine and be error-free under Windows. I reported it at the time to LKML, but didn't get anywhere. Seemed nobody else had a real floppy drive to test with...!

Let me know how you get on! I'd like to be able to use the floppy for some retro computer equipment (Acorn Archimedes, amongst others).

aaazen · 03-24-2016, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarcT

I've had problems using a real floppy drive with 64bit Linux kernels on my workstation (an older AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 based box) in the past. The same system used to dual boot 32bit Windows-XP which would handle the floppy drive just fine. Can't say I've tried recently with Kernel 3.10.17 in Slackware64 14.1, so it may have been fixed.

Trying to format a floppy with Kernel 2.6.33.3 (Slackware64-13.0 or 13.1) caused the following in "dmesg". The clocksource was not unstable until the format was attempted.

Code:

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
[...]
Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -144951798830 ns)
Switching to clocksource hpet
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 8
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 1
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 16
...

The same floppy disk would format fine and be error-free under Windows. I reported it at the time to LKML, but didn't get anywhere. Seemed nobody else had a real floppy drive to test with...!

Let me know how you get on! I'd like to be able to use the floppy for some retro computer equipment (Acorn Archimedes, amongst others).

I have a floppy drive that works ok on Slackware 13.0 using a single core AMD Athlon.

The quad-core AMD Phenom system probably has trouble with the internal clock timers because of the multiple cores.

Here is an old Slackware thread about clock timers:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...9/#post2772946