Re: Floppies in Linux

On 2007-02-11, kurt <kurtl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
1) Windows doesn't constantly poll the floppy drive, it uses the media
change feature of floppy drives since about 1985 to detect whether a
floppy was inserted or removed (It can't tell which, only that one or
the other occurred).

Actually, the PC 3.5" floppy has no such feature. There is a /dskchg
which doubles as /ready signal, but it just says to the controller
"we've got the needed angular speed, captain!"

On the other hand, the SUN and Apple floppies had the required hardware.
Not sure for the Amiga and Atari, though.

3) While I agree with Mercury that this is handy, (I can bear the 2.5
seconds of "lock up" before the "Insert media into drive A" message
appears), Linux requires media - all media - to be mounted - get used to it.

If this is true, somebody should tell Luis Bustamante (debian
maintainer) because he wrote something like this concerning the mtools
package:

aburn {afrodita}[aburn] $apt-cache show mtools
Package: mtools
Priority: standard
Section: otherosfs
Installed-Size: 476
Maintainer: Luis Bustamante <>
Architecture: i386
Version: 3.9.9-2.1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4)
Suggests: floppyd
Filename: pool/main/m/mtools/mtools_3.9.9-2.1_i386.deb
Size: 199092
MD5sum: 423ea62f1d09855fa923e65fb7b4f9ea
SHA1: 380ba27b1288d71d8bbfe47c1e01c958cd3d8abf
SHA256: dc0ad95e668be4fcae86f059ae642d4e9cd7df1d2f05d4642332076ad8083f70
Description: Tools for manipulating MSDOS files
Mtools is a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS disks from Unix
without mounting them. It supports Win'95 style long file names, OS/2
Xdf disks, ZIP/JAZ disks and 2m disks (store up to 1992kB on a high
density 3 1/2 disk).
.
Also included in this package are commands to eject and manipulate
the write/password protection control of Zip disks.

--
Najveca moc u fizici je moci staviti minus tamo gdje ti treba.
The greatest special power in physics is to be able to place the minus
sign where you need it.
.

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