[CentOS] floppy drives

[David G. Miller]

mark <m.roth at ...> writes:

> 
> On 04/07/13 16:22, Frank Cox wrote:
> > On Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:18:29 -0400
> > mark wrote:
> >
> >> All of 'em are old DOS. Just tried mdir a:, and the same: can't open,
> >> can't initials A:. I really doubt the drives themselves are dead, but....
> >
> > Floppy disks have a finite usable life.  Depending on where and how you have
> > been storing them, they may be shot.
> >
> Yeah, but.... I tried three of 'em, three different OEM, and three ages, 
> and they all give me fdisk saying it's not a valid block device.
> 
> Is it possibly that there's some driver missing?
Floppy drives also have a limited lifetime.  Are you sure the drive itself
(not the disk) is good?

I also have a bunch of old floppies and try to keep at least one system with
a working floppy drive.  I see:

[dave at waste ~]# ls /dev/fd*
/dev/fd@       /dev/fd0u1120  /dev/fd0u1722  /dev/fd0u1840  /dev/fd0u720 
/dev/fd0u830
/dev/fd0       /dev/fd0u1440  /dev/fd0u1743  /dev/fd0u1920  /dev/fd0u800
/dev/fd0u1040  /dev/fd0u1680  /dev/fd0u1760  /dev/fd0u360   /dev/fd0u820
[dave at waste ~]# ls -l /dev/floppy
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Apr  3 17:17 /dev/floppy -> fd0
[dave at waste ~]# lsmod | grep floppy
floppy                 57125  0 

on that system and it reads and writes floppies.

Cheers,
Dave