Question about LS120 floppies

Question about LS120 floppies

[Larry Finger]

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
just fine for standard floppies, but will not accept one of the 120 MB
disks. From what I read, the ide-atapi-floppy driver should be the
correct one.

Does the driver still support these disks?

Thanks,

Larry

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Robert Hancock]

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
> just fine for standard floppies, but will not accept one of the 120 MB
> disks. From what I read, the ide-atapi-floppy driver should be the
> correct one.
>
> Does the driver still support these disks?

Are they using the old IDE drivers, or libata? Do they have any kernel 
output, etc?

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Larry Finger]

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.

Larry

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Alan Cox]

On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:01:02 -0500
Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> 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.

Alan

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Robert Hancock]

On 07/02/2009 11:12 AM, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:01:02 -0500
> Larry Finger<Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>  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.

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Larry Finger]

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@lwfinger.net>  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

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Larry Finger]

Robert Hancock wrote:
> 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.

Since the last posting on this thread, I have acquired the hardware
from Roland Hughes. He reports that it worked with Ubuntu Hardy,
FreeDOS and Windows XP. I am assuming that the hardware is OK, but it
certainly is strange. I don't know the details for all commands, but
the command to get the capacity is 0x23 rather than the standard 0x25.

Will it be possible to make such strange hardware work under libata?
Is there a document that shows how to implement quirky devices? I
found the scsi_static_device_list[] entries, but also saw the
admonition not to add to that list.

Thanks,

Larry

Re: Question about LS120 floppies

[Robert Hancock]

On 08/02/2009 05:19 PM, Larry Finger wrote:
> Robert Hancock wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Since the last posting on this thread, I have acquired the hardware
> from Roland Hughes. He reports that it worked with Ubuntu Hardy,
> FreeDOS and Windows XP. I am assuming that the hardware is OK, but it
> certainly is strange. I don't know the details for all commands, but
> the command to get the capacity is 0x23 rather than the standard 0x25.
>
> Will it be possible to make such strange hardware work under libata?
> Is there a document that shows how to implement quirky devices? I
> found the scsi_static_device_list[] entries, but also saw the
> admonition not to add to that list.

Well, it looks like there is some specific code for this drive in 
drivers/ide/ide-floppy.c that uses READ FORMAT CAPACITIES, which "allows 
the Host to request a list of the possible format capacities
for an installed writable media" instead of READ CAPACITY. The code in 
the sd driver (which gets used under libata) doesn't do that. However 
from my reading of the MMC spec (which is where READ FORMAT CAPACITIES 
is defined), it seems like READ CAPACITY should still work. (But then I 
wouldn't be surprised if the manufacturer used the SCSI/MMC standards as 
toilet paper..)

Supposedly LS-120 disks are pre-formatted, so the "cannot read medium - 
unknown format" error is rather bizarre. It would definitely be useful 
to verify that this drive is at all functional under an older distro 
using the IDE drivers, or WinXP before spending too much time on it..