*BSD News Article 47473


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From: aflundi@mdl.sandia.gov (Alan F Lundin)
Subject: Re: useing floppies under 2.0.5-950622-SNAP
Message-ID: <1995Jul27.141159.28319@mdl.sandia.gov>
Reply-To: aflundi@sandia.gov (Alan F Lundin)
Organization: MDL, Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM
References: <3v0f77$dok@bronze.coil.com> <3v5ehf$llp@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 14:11:59 GMT
Lines: 60

In article <3v5ehf$llp@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>,
J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote:
>Eric Chet <echet@coil.com> wrote:
>
>>/dev/fd0c on /mnt: Incorrect super block.
>(Already answered by Jordan)
>
>>Lets try a msdos disk:
>>mount -t msdos /dev/fd0c /mnt
>>msdos: mount: Input/output error
>>
>>dmesg shows:
>>fd0c: hard error reading fsbn 0 (ST0 40<abnrml> ST1 1<no_am> ST2 0 cyl 0 
>>hd 0 sec 1)
>
>Bad disk.  Probably wrong format?  It couldn't find the address mark
>of the ID field of the very first sector.  If it's a 720 KB floppy,
>used /dev/fd0.720.  Btw., ``/dev/fd0c'' is the wrong approach for
>floppies, there's nothing like the partition scheme as on a hard disk.
>Use ``/dev/fd0'' as a synonym for the `standard' capacity (1440 KB for
>3.5in, 1200 KB for 5.25in), or use ``/dev/fd0.<capacity>''.

I've had lots of problems with the floppies on two
quite different systems.  Am I the only one?  --or
does this have something to do with badly designed
hardware? (I have an ISA bus with an Adaptec 1542B
and generic floppy controller on my home system, and a 
VLB/ISA bus with Bt445S and generic floppy controller
on my work system.)

For instance, almost every time I use "mdel" to delete
a file from an MS-DOS disk, the disk seems to become
corrupted, and I'm pretty sure that the disks aren't
bad since I have no problems at all re-using them on
a SPARCstation the same ways (i.e., mtools).

  $ mdir
   Volume in drive A has no label
   Directory for A:/

  PRT_TGZ  UU       106697    7-04-95  11:27a
	1 File(s)     1350656 bytes free
  [1]+  Done                    netscape http://www.internet.net/
  $ mdel prt_tgz.uu
  $ mdir
  disk_read: read: Input/output error

with an error:

  fd0c: hard error reading fsbn 17 of 0-35 (ST0 40<abnrml> ST1 1<no_am>
  ST2 1<no_dam> cyl 0 hd 0 sec 18)

Is there something I just don't understand about the
floppies?  I notice that the error message indicates
that mtools uses fd0c.  Perhaps I ought to recompile
the mtools package so that it doesn't use fd0c?

--alan
-- 
Alan Lundin <aflundi@sandia.gov>