mark <m.roth@...> 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@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@waste ~]# ls -l /dev/floppy lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Apr 3 17:17 /dev/floppy -> fd0 [dave@waste ~]# lsmod | grep floppy floppy 57125 0
on that system and it reads and writes floppies.
Cheers, Dave