[vox-tech] floppy woes

[Chris McKenzie]

First your should not be able to fdformat /dev/fd0.  You *should* only be
able to fdformat raw devices.  Try fdformat /dev/rfd0.  Here is some more
tips:

With these I have always tried brute force methods.

tar -cf Backupdev.tar /dev

chmod 0777 /dev/*fd*

ls -l *fd* | less (confirm nothing points to a stationary disk like hd0)

if so:

find /dev -name "*dev*" -print -exec head -1 {} \;

That will show you what is readable as a real device

now take each one and try something like

dd if=/dev/zero of=(device) bs=512 count=2

to see if it will write

When you (if you get your device)

1. make sure the disk image is 2880*512 bytes, if not then

cp (diskimage) (diskimage).original

dd if=<disk image> bs=1 count=(calculate 2880*512-diskimage.filesize) >>
diskimage

now dd=<disk image> of=<device>

else

go to your bios and turn on drive disk check (or something similar to that
wording) and see if the floppy light actually turns on upon boot up.

If so, then type in dmesg | less and see if you *NIX recognizes it as
such.

If so, then using mknod(8) you can try and remake the devices.  Many
*NIX's have a shell script in the /dev to do it automatically and often
times the bottom of the mknod man page refers to it. Good luck!

Sincerely,
	Christopher J. McKenzie

	cjm@ucdavis.edu
	mckenzie@cs.ucdavis.edu
	H: +1 818.9917724
	C: +1 818.4293772
	1815 Mesa Ridge Ave
	Westlake Village, CA 91362