[SGVLUG] Forgot to mention about the 5.25 --> present conversion

[David Lawyer]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 02:18:49PM -0800, Emerson, Tom (*IC) wrote:
> We don't need any actual 5.25" drives -- we have access to those -- the
> problem is that the BIOS on his motherboard /doesn't/ /have/ /5.25/
> /support/!!!

There is no need for the BIOS to support it.  The floppy disk
controller on this MB must work however.  I tried to get my 5 1/4
drive to work and it seems that my BIOS (a used replacement) will only
recognize it as a 3 1/2 drive.  Furthermore, it seems that the floppy
disk controlled on the MB will only support one drive (the fd0 drive
or a: drive).  But the linux floppy module doesn't use the BIOS to
access the drive so it makes no difference if the BIOS is unaware that
its a 5 1/4 drive.  But it might make a difference if you tried to boot
from a 5 1/4" floppy that the bios didn't know about.

But I'm not 100% sure of the above since I get a lot of read errors.
The top directory reads OK and shows all the files on the 5 1/4"
floppy but I hear a lot of clicking and see IO error messages as the
drive tries in vain to reread file contents.  I'll keep trying

			David Lawyer