Re: [PARPORT] Parallel floppy drive


Heather Stern (star@starshine.org)
Sun, 2 May 1999 20:06:14 -0700 (PDT)


I ate the fortune cookie first, then read what grant@torque.net wrote:
> The Maxell PCCard is actually from Freecom in Germany. ...
> ... In principle, all you probably need to do is to add
> a new entry into the PCMCIA configuration file. (That worked for me and
> the CD, anyway ...)

Hmm. I look forward to that -- offlist, if you like.
 
> > What I have is an honest-to-goodness parallel floppy; it has a standard
> > 25 pin tail, and plugs into the parallel port on the back on my system.
>
> No. It's not a _parallel_ floppy. You could not plug it into any
> other parallel port and expect it to work. The electronics in your
> computer multiplexes the connector between a parallel port and a floppy
> controller. (It's all done inside a single chip which implements
> both the parallel port and the FDC - it's a standard part from National
> Semiconductor.)

Ah. Okay, my mistake. But it still doesn't resemble a PC card :)
 
> As I said the first time, post the actual kernel log messages that
> occur when the drive fails, perhaps someone will be able to help with
> this, if you give us some data.

When I attempt to mount a floppy, under best circumstances, that works.
In a recent attempt, I mounted a read only MSDOS floppy (some norton utils
diskette). The mount returned with no complaint. I can cd to the mount
point and ls reveals contents.

An attempt to read a file there (less, or cat) gets a complaint at the
console:
        cat: diskedit.exe: Input/output error

/var/log/messages reveals:
        floppy0: disk absent or changed during operation
        end_request: I/O error. dev 02:00, sector 2
        bread in fat_access failed
        attempt to access beyond end of device
        02:00: rw=0, want=543, limit=4
        attempt to access beyond end of device
        02:00: rw=0, want=543, limit=4

I trimmed off the times since all these lines has the same time, down to
the hundredths. The last two lines really are listed twice.

Whereas, using dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/usr/local/from/floppy/nu.emergency.dsk
produced a file image of the right size... 720K in this case.

I tried rebooting with a floppy=thinkpad append line, but instead of two
complaints about accessing past end, it gives 21. Other than that equally
painful.

If a helpful soul wants to take this offlist with me, I don't mind.

Ob parallel:
  Does anyboody know if Laplink or Norton Commander parallel protocols
  are supported by anything in Linux?

  . | . Heather Stern | star@starshine.org
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sun 02 May 1999 - 23:36:17 EDT