External floppy drive. [Solved]

[Aronticuz]

I don't know if it helps at all but there is at least one business making a go of transferring data on floppy disks to other formats.
Apparently a lot of 50 or so years old equipment had floppy disk controllers and it is time to do some work on those

[Stuart_M]

Another thing to check is to go to your BIOS and see if there is anything about floppy drives that can be changed.

My MSI motherboard BIOS has nothing about Floppy Disk Drives but I have seen a few online reports only a few years old with USB Floppy Drive problems because of a setting they found in their BIOS. One reported their BIOS displayed Floppy Legacy: Disabled and changing that to "enabled" solved the problem.



Earlier you said your Windows 7 runs the USB Floppy Drive fine but not in your Windows 10 or MX Linux. If all three are on the same hardware then I would think your BIOS is okay...but maybe worthwhile to check?

[GuiGuy]

Rumour has it that the Linux kernel dropped floppy support in 2019: is this true?

[bassplayer69]

Rumour has it that the Linux kernel dropped floppy support in 2019: is this true?

No rumor: https://techreport.com/news/3464145/lin ... e-support/ That support is for floppy controller support on motherboards. This issue OP is having is with a USB device, in this case a floppy drive. Should still work.

quote from the article:

"Actual working physical floppy hardware is getting hard to find, and… I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint,” Torvalds writes. The few floppy drives that are still whirring away out there are mostly USB-based, Torvalds continues, adding that those don’t use the hardware floppy driver. The driver won’t be going away – it’s still available for use in virtual environments. Future maintenance, though, will require someone to step up, Torvalds writes."

[GuiGuy]

Rumour has it that the Linux kernel dropped floppy support in 2019: is this true?

No rumor: https://techreport.com/news/3464145/lin ... e-support/ That support is for floppy controller support on motherboards. This issue OP is having is with a USB device, in this case a floppy drive. Should still work.

quote from the article:

"Actual working physical floppy hardware is getting hard to find, and… I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint,” Torvalds writes. The few floppy drives that are still whirring away out there are mostly USB-based, Torvalds continues, adding that those don’t use the hardware floppy driver. The driver won’t be going away – it’s still available for use in virtual environments. Future maintenance, though, will require someone to step up, Torvalds writes."

I believe the article is wrong, because even via USB the floppy requires support for the fat12 file system which is different from that used by hard drives.

[GuiGuy]

Rumour has it that the Linux kernel dropped floppy support in 2019: is this true?

...........
,,,,,,,,,,,

I believe the article is wrong, because even via USB the floppy requires support for the fat12 file system which is different from that used by hard drives.

I am right! Fired up an old MX15 machine and it reads media in my USB floppy drive just fine .
I realize few people are interested in old floppies, but would like to point out that this is actually a KERNEL REGRESSION.
Could Debian be persuaded to fix their kernel?

Edit:-
Gaer Boy (see post below) has helped me to understand that my hardware - not the kernel - is causing the problem .

[Gaer Boy]

I have a simple Sony external USB floppy drive from 2006 an still have my WordPerfect 5.1+ installation disks. MX-21 AHS with the 5.16 kernel mounts and opens text files no problem. A WordPerfect text file opens correctly in LibreOffice. QSI in case there's something special about my 1-year old machine.

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.18.0-2mx-amd64 [5.18.5-1~mx21+1] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.18.0-2mx-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm 4.16.1 vt: 7 
           dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: MX-21.2.1_ahs_x64 Wildflower November 22  2021 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: B550I AORUS PRO AX v: N/A serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Gigabyte model: B550I AORUS PRO AX v: x.x serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: American Megatrends v: F11 date: 12/31/2020 
Battery:   Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M185 serial: <filter> 
           charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging 
           Device-2: hidpp_battery_1 model: Logitech Wireless Keyboard K270 serial: <filter> 
           charge: 50% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: N/A 
CPU:       Info: 6-Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with Radeon Graphics bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
           arch: Zen 3 family: 19 (25) model-id: 50 (80) stepping: 0 microcode: A50000B cache: 
           L2: 3 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 93426 
           Speed: 1419 MHz min/max: 1400/3900 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1419 
           2: 1697 3: 1359 4: 1575 5: 1211 6: 1483 7: 1250 8: 1253 9: 1559 10: 1680 11: 1352 
           12: 1535 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 
           mitigation: Retpolines, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP: always-on, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Cezanne vendor: Gigabyte driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus-ID: 07:00.0 
           chip-ID: 1002:1638 class-ID: 0300 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.14 compositor: xfwm4 v: 4.16.1 driver: 
           loaded: amdgpu,ati unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") 
           s-diag: 582mm (22.9") 
           Monitor-1: HDMI-A-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 305 size: 160x90mm (6.3x3.5") 
           diag: 184mm (7.2") 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RENOIR (LLVM 14.0.5 DRM 3.46 5.18.0-2mx-amd64) v: 4.6 Mesa 22.0.5 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD Renoir Radeon High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 07:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1637 class-ID: 0403 
           Device-2: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 07:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3 class-ID: 0403 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.18.0-2mx-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000 
           bus-ID: 05:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8125 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: f000 bus-ID: 06:00.0 
           chip-ID: 8086:2723 class-ID: 0280 
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel AX200 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-8:3 
           chip-ID: 8087:0029 class-ID: e001 
           Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: down bt-service: N/A rfk-block: 
           hardware: no software: no address: <filter> 
           Info: acl-mtu: 0:0 sco-mtu: 0:0 link-mode: slave accept 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 2.05 TiB used: 248.32 GiB (11.8%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB 
           block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> 
           rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 vendor: Toshiba model: HDWD110 size: 931.51 GiB 
           block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: HDD rpm: 7200 
           serial: <filter> rev: A8J0 scheme: MBR 
           ID-3: /dev/sdc maj-min: 8:32 vendor: Seagate model: ST1000DM005 HD103SJ 
           size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s type: HDD 
           rpm: 7200 serial: <filter> rev: 00E5 scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 30 GiB size: 29.36 GiB (97.87%) used: 14.43 GiB (49.1%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/sda5 maj-min: 8:5 
           ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 100 MiB size: 98.4 MiB (98.45%) used: 660 KiB (0.7%) fs: vfat 
           dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 7.81 GiB used: 11.8 MiB (0.1%) priority: -2 
           dev: /dev/sdc11 maj-min: 8:43 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 33.8 C mobo: 16.8 C gpu: amdgpu temp: 28.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2395 lib: 1247 flatpak: 0 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://free.hands.com/debian/ bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://free.hands.com/debian/ bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxlinux.mirrors.uk2.net/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           2: deb http://mxlinux.mirrors.uk2.net/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye ahs
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] http://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:      Processes: 372 Uptime: 5d 19h 26m wakeups: 199 Memory: 15.07 GiB used: 3.96 GiB (26.3%) 
           Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 
           alt: 10 Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06 
Boot Mode: UEFI

[GuiGuy]

Thanks, Gaer Boy.
So it must be my hardware which is rejecting the USB floppy.

Code: Select all

Snapshot created on: 20220804_1128
System:    Kernel: 4.19.0-21-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-21-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 tk: Gtk 3.24.5 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm 4.14.0 vt: 7 
           dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: MX-19.4_x64 patito feo May 31  2020 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: LENOVO product: 90BX001HUK v: Lenovo E50-00 serial: <filter> 
           Chassis: type: 3 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: LENOVO model: Aptio CRB v: 31900056 WIN serial: <filter> UEFI-[Legacy]: LENOVO 
           v: O07KT44AUS date: 08/29/2014 
CPU:       Info: Quad Core model: Intel Pentium J2900 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Silvermont 
           family: 6 model-id: 37 (55) stepping: 8 microcode: 838 cache: L2: 1024 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 19325 
           Speed: 1333 MHz min/max: 1333/2666 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1333 2: 1333 3: 1333 
           4: 1333 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT disabled 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass status: Not affected 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 
           mitigation: Retpolines, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display vendor: Lenovo 
           driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0f31 class-ID: 0300 
           Device-2: Generalplus 808 Camera type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo 
           bus-ID: 1-3.3:4 chip-ID: 1b3f:2002 class-ID: 0102 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 compositor: xfwm4 v: 4.14.0 driver: 
           loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1600x1200 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 423x317mm (16.7x12.5") 
           s-diag: 529mm (20.8") 
           Monitor-1: VGA-1 res: 1600x1200 hz: 60 dpi: 100 size: 408x306mm (16.1x12.0") 
           diag: 510mm (20.1") 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Bay Trail v: 4.2 Mesa 18.3.6 compat-v: 3.0 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series High Definition Audio 
           vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:0f04 
           class-ID: 0403 
           Device-2: Generalplus 808 Camera type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo 
           bus-ID: 1-3.3:4 chip-ID: 1b3f:2002 class-ID: 0102 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k4.19.0-21-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 12.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Lenovo 
           driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 447.15 GiB used: 40.74 GiB (9.1%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SanDisk model: SSD PLUS 240GB size: 223.58 GiB 
           block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> 
           rev: 00RL scheme: MBR 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 type: USB vendor: Crucial model: CT240BX500SSD1 
           size: 223.57 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: SSD 
           serial: <filter> scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 103.46 GiB size: 101.28 GiB (97.89%) used: 40.74 GiB (40.2%) 
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb3 maj-min: 8:19 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 4 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
           dev: /dev/sdb2 maj-min: 8:18 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 37.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2769 lib: 1484 flatpak: 0 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/mxlinux/mx/repo/ buster main non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera-stable.list 
           1: deb https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/skype-stable.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.skype.com/deb stable main
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 201 Uptime: 10h 55m wakeups: 4 Memory: 7.69 GiB used: 1.65 GiB (21.4%) 
           Init: SysVinit v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 
           alt: 8 Shell: quick-system-in default: Bash v: 5.0.3 running-in: quick-system-in 
           inxi: 3.3.06