linux and floppy drive

[Jude DaShiell]

I have a floppy drive debian and arch will not use.  It works well enough 
when I put an unformatted disk in it and boot the computer the boot 
process is stopped and remains so until that floppy disk gets removed.  
It's one of the 3.5 inch floppy disks and I noticed several different 
possible formats for it in /etc/mediaprm when I checked that file.  Even 
new floppy disks with no low level formatting on them will not low level 
format and forget about any other access operations.  Unless I'm 
overlooking something, there doesn't appear to be any command line tool to 
do a floppy probe operation and write an appropriate configuration file or 
update /etc/fstab.  kde has kde-floppy but kde hasn't got accessibility to 
the same extent command line users with speakup have or emacspeak or gnome 
users have with orca.  I'll probably be able to move files off floppy 
disks if I can get the internal drive working or if that fails buy a usb 
floppy and try to get that working.

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jude <jdashiel at shellworld.net>
Adobe fiend for failing to Flash