[CLOSED] Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

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[CLOSED] Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby griffin » Apr 22nd, '18, 11:05

I can't get a legacy IBM 3.5in floppy disk drive to work in order to flash a BIOS to rescue a motherboard and fix my PC. I'm posting this to the Advanced support forum because few people have to bother with floppy disks anymore.

This machine didn't have a floppy drive when I installed Mageia 6, so I had to load the floppy support to use one.
Code: Select all
# modprobe -v floppy
insmod /lib/modules/4.14.30-desktop-3.mga6/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko.xz

Entering the modprobe command caused the following lines appear in the log:
Code: Select all
kernel: Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
kernel: FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
krunner[2476]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/drives/Floppy_Drive" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Drive")
org_kde_powerdevil[2484]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/drives/Floppy_Drive" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Drive")
kdeinit5[2420]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/drives/Floppy_Drive" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Drive")
plasmashell[2478]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/drives/Floppy_Drive" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Drive")
krunner[2476]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/fd0" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block", "org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Filesystem")
org_kde_powerdevil[2484]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/fd0" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block", "org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Filesystem")
kdeinit5[2420]: QObject::connect: invalid null parameter
kdeinit5[2420]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/fd0" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block", "org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Filesystem")
plasmashell[2478]: "/org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/fd0" has new interfaces: ("org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block", "org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Filesystem")
kdeinit5[2420]: QObject::connect: invalid null parameter

That appears to have created a floppy disk device /dev/fd0.
Code: Select all
# ls -al /dev/fd0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 2, 0 /dev/fd0

But an attempt to format a MSDOS filesystem on a diskette fails. When I enter the command "fdformat /dev/fd0", the following messages appear in the log:
Code: Select all
floppy0: probe failed... (15 times)
kernel: print_req_error: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
kernel: floppy: error 10 while reading block 0

And the console displays:
Code: Select all
fdformat /dev/fd0
fdformat: cannot open /dev/fd0: No such device or address

Trying a different command also fails.
Code: Select all
# mkdosfs /dev/fd0
mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
mkdosfs: unable to open /dev/fd0: No such device or address

I believe the floppy drive works and it's connected properly, so what have I not done or done wrong?
Last edited by griffin on Apr 24th, '18, 03:49, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby morgano » Apr 23rd, '18, 14:28

1) Do you by chance have an old floppy with content, and can you read that?
2) There is a mechanical write(and format) protect "switch" at a corner of the floppy cartridge...
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Re: Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby griffin » Apr 23rd, '18, 18:57

I dug out four old diskettes, but they're odd content - OS/2 and Windows98 Thinkpad setup disks and a Mandriva 2008.1 boot disk. My system is set up to boot from floppy if present and it lights up the floppy drive at boot, but it doesn't load from the floppy, which suggests to me that it's not reading that. I'll look for others, but the floppy drive doesn't seem to be readable. Kfloppy, the KDE Floppy Formatter immediately reports "Internal error: device not correctly defined."
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Re: Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby filip » Apr 23rd, '18, 22:55

griffin wrote:My system is set up to boot from floppy if present and it lights up the floppy drive at boot, but it doesn't load from the floppy, which suggests to me that it's not reading that.

This suggests some HW problem or maybe just BIOS misconfiguration.
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Re: Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby jiml8 » Apr 24th, '18, 00:04

Given the age of both the drive and the disks, I have to agree. You likely have a hardware issue. Most likely the disks are bad, but it could also be the drive itself.
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Re: Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby griffin » Apr 24th, '18, 03:48

filip wrote:
griffin wrote:My system is set up to boot from floppy if present and it lights up the floppy drive at boot, but it doesn't load from the floppy, which suggests to me that it's not reading that.

This suggests some HW problem or maybe just BIOS misconfiguration.
jiml8 wrote:Given the age of both the drive and the disks, I have to agree. You likely have a hardware issue. Most likely the disks are bad, but it could also be the drive itself.

Yes, it's possibly a hardware problem, since I'm not positively certain that both the floppy drive and the disks are good, and they are old. And the BIOS is suspect too, because it's downlevel and might be damaged - the longtime good ECC memory I put in the system throws errors in ECC mode.

As suggested, I looked more closely at this problem. Since I didn't have another floppy disk drive, I dug out a dozen old floppy disks to see if I could find one that worked. After trying several floppy disks, I found a number that would mount in the floppy drive. Kfloppy still didn't like the floppy drive for some unknown reason, so I tried the command line as root. The command fdformat found 10 diskettes that had uncorrectable errors, but eventually it formatted one without error and I was able to run mkdosfs, copy the BIOS file to the floppy, run md5sum to verify that it was copied correctly, then reboot and flash the BIOS on my desktop system motherboard. It might still be flaky, but I have tested it and the memory works in ECC mode now.

I'll close this thread, since this was a hardware issue.
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Re: [CLOSED] Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby doktor5000 » Apr 24th, '18, 18:26

Just a dumb question for the next time maybe, the motherboard is probably quite old so that it doesn't support flashing directly from a file from usb mass storage?
But usually the vendors also offer ISO images for BIOS updates which can be written to usb via dd, and the mainboard will usually happily accept that ...
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Re: [CLOSED] Can't get a floppy disk drive to work

Postby JoesCat » Jun 25th, '18, 18:51

Reading the thread, you may probably have a defective drive, but you can also check for these...

Floppy drives were made in the days when computers ran 100MHz.
You may want to try using dosbox or dosemu and slow it down to 450MHz max, example, try 300MHz and see if it is readable or writable.
I'm uncertain if this works, but if yes, then it is not a fault of the drive, but a problem that the computer runs too fast for the drive.
Some older timing methods were simply done with a 16bit loop-counter increment or decrement.
With today's computers running easily 10x faster or more vs 100MHz (some instructions took multiple cycles back then too), then the timing would disappear too soon. In any case, you would not be able to boot from the floppy, since the computer would likely be running at native speed, not 100MHz.

Check the floppy drive for termination.
If you had two floppy drives, you probably had master (A), and slave (B), at some point in time.
The slave drive may have a switch for A/B, or some jumper settings, or there may be some termination switch or resistors needed.
The master drive would usually be the one at the end of the ribbon cable, and the slave drive would be somewhere in the middle, but also needed the termination resistors turned off or removed.

Find a USB to floppy drive. Today's computers will boot from a floppy drive that plugs into the USB port.
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