linux-kernel - Re: Floppy access by dd fails for 2.6.26-rc2 to final, possibly even earlier

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Date:	Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:13:28 +1000
From:	Grant Coady <grant_lkml@...o.com.au>
To:	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...access.nl>
Cc:	Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@...il.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Floppy access by dd fails for 2.6.26-rc2 to final, possibly even earlier

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:17:58 +0200, Rene Herman <rene.herman@...access.nl> wrote:

>On 23-07-08 02:46, Gene Heskett wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 22 July 2008, Wakko Warner wrote:
>>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>> I just been advised by private email that I an not the only one who has
>>>> lost the use of his floppy drive via dd.  The corresponder noted that he
>>>> had a copy of DSL with a 2.4.something kernel, and his drive worked
>>>> flawlessly while booted to DSL.
>>>>
>>>> So now there are at least 2 floppy users wandering in the wilderness
>>>> looking for water.  We need it to support 20 year old computers without a
>>>> TCP stack or network cards.
>>> I guess I'll chime in.  I'm not sure this is the same problem or not, but my
>>> Alpha AS1000a (EV56 5/400) has never successfully been able to read the
>>> floppy.  I always get garbage.  The drive does work as I can use the RCU
>>>from floppy from the Arc BIOS.
>>> Linux sees this device as a 2.88mb floppy.  It is a 1.44mb and the
>>> information in the Arc BIOS is set to 1.44mb (I don't think it matters, I
>>> boot from SRM, not sure how to set the floppy there)
>>>
>>> I also do not see any errors or other useful messages in the logs.
>>>
>> Neither do I. It registers as
>> Jul 20 22:56:59 coyote kernel: [   16.297661] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
>> Jul 20 22:56:59 coyote kernel: [   16.312758] FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
>> 
>> 
>>> Jun  1 15:23:06 narf kernel: [4262383.309846] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 2.88M
>>> Jun  1 15:23:06 narf kernel: [4262383.324494] FDC 0 is a National
>>> Semiconductor PC87306
>>>
>>> I tried forcing to use a specific type:
>>> Jun  1 16:21:38 narf kernel: [4194206.301784] floppy0: setting CMOS code to
>>> 4 Jun  1 16:21:38 narf kernel: [4194206.301784] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is
>>> 1.44M Jun  1 16:21:38 narf kernel: [4194206.314479] FDC 0 is a National
>>> Semiconductor PC87306
>>>
>>> But that failed even worse with errors on sector 0.  (NOTE the floppy was
>>> good)
>> 
>> Glad to know I'm not the only one, there are 3 of us now.
>
>Am not reproducing on 2.6.26, so it's at least not just everyone. Normal 
>floppy works fine here:
>
>root@...e4:~# mkfs.minix /dev/fd0
>480 inodes
>1440 blocks
>Firstdatazone=19 (19)
>Zonesize=1024
>Maxsize=268966912
>
>root@...e4:~# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
>root@...e4:~# echo BAR >/mnt/floppy/FOO
>root@...e4:~# umount /mnt/floppy
>root@...e4:~# dd if=/dev/fd0 of=floppy.img
>2880+0 records in
>2880+0 records out
>1474560 bytes (1.5 MB) copied, 48.1893 s, 30.6 kB/s
>root@...e4:~# mount -o loop floppy.img /mnt/floppy
>root@...e4:~# cat /mnt/floppy/FOO
>BAR
>root@...e4:~# umount /mnt/floppy
>root@...e4:~# dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/fd0
>2880+0 records in
>2880+0 records out
>1474560 bytes (1.5 MB) copied, 99.3359 s, 14.8 kB/s
>root@...e4:~# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
>root@...e4:~# cat /mnt/floppy/FOO
>BAR

Works here for ext2 and msdos, but I'm running on the linux box used to test.

Grant.
>
>Rene.

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