Robert Hancock wrote: > On 07/02/2009 11:12 AM, Alan Cox wrote: >> On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:01:02 -0500 >> Larry Finger<Larry.Finger@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >>> Robert Hancock wrote: >>>> On 07/01/2009 02:30 PM, Larry Finger wrote: >>>>> I have been trying to help someone on the openSUSE forums. He is >>>>> running a 2.6.27 kernel and finds that his "Super Floppy" drive works >>>> Are they using the old IDE drivers, or libata? Do they have any kernel >>>> output, etc? >>> In 2.6.27, I think he has the old IDE driver, but I'm not sure. In any >>> case, the entire thread on the openSUSE forum is at >>> >>> http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/417147-ls-120-opensuse-11-a.html >>> >>> Thanks for any help you can give. >> >> Basically four content free pages. Ignoring all the stuff about HAL the >> hardware is detected and the drive reports that the media type is not >> supported. >> >> That all appears to be working beautifully, although I've no idea why the >> media type is not supported - I wonder if something is trying to read the >> wrong block sizes or if the LS120 has some magic no standard bits. >> >> Unfortunately they are very very obscure hardware. > > Yes, definitely a lot of uninformed speculation on that thread. The > floppy driver has nothing to do with any IDE/ATA drive like this, and if > OpenSUSE is using libata drivers then attempting to load the IDE floppy > driver is also useless. > > It would be useful if the reporter could verify that the drive is at all > functional with that media under any OS. That "Cannot read medium - > unknown format" is being reported by the drive itself in response to a > "read capacity" request, not the driver. So unless there's some magic > that the driver needs to do to get the drive to recognize the disc, it > seems like a hardware problem. The OP seemed more interested in ranting about the state of drivers in Linux than in getting his device to work. He is sending the hardware and a couple of new disks to me so that I can figure what is wrong. He is currently trying to purchase a Panasonic drive on Ebay, as he claims that the coding is different than for the Matshitu drives. At least there is a different driver under DOS. These drives don't even have Windows drivers. I'm prepared to try his drive with FreeDOS on my machine when it arrives. Larry -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
