Floppy disk very slow

Floppy disk very slow

[Bernhard Bialas]

Hello,
I have discovered the following strange behavior of the floppy disk:
-accessing from hard disk to floppy (via f: a: command) takes approx. 10 sec
- then, the " dir" command takes from 1-5 minutes to list the directory 
content
Also no chance to start any program from the disk.
Under Linux the behavior is normal: an "ls" give in approx 1 sec the content 
of the floppy.

My question: have some other people made a simillar experience?
The test are done with dosemu 1.2.2 and 1.3.1
Linux System is SuSE 9.1 (kernel 2.6.5 (with some patches)),on a AMD Duron 
system.
Maybe has this something to do with the fact that the floppy is mounted via 
subfs ?

Any ideas?

Best regards
Bernhard Bialas

Re: Floppy disk very slow

[Bart Oldeman]

Hi Bernhard,

> I have discovered the following strange behavior of the floppy disk:
> -accessing from hard disk to floppy (via f: a: command) takes approx. 10 sec
> - then, the " dir" command takes from 1-5 minutes to list the directory
> content
> Also no chance to start any program from the disk.
> Under Linux the behavior is normal: an "ls" give in approx 1 sec the content
> of the floppy.
>
> My question: have some other people made a simillar experience?
> The test are done with dosemu 1.2.2 and 1.3.1
> Linux System is SuSE 9.1 (kernel 2.6.5 (with some patches)),on a AMD Duron
> system.

It has to do with kernel 2.6, and the way dosemu accesses the floppy.
I had not used a floppy at all for 2 months or so (so I tend to forget
these problems, almost forgetting that floppies still exist...) but trying
it again with kernel 2.6.9 it seems the problem is still there.

There's a bug in SF somewhere that tells about it.

> Maybe has this something to do with the fact that the floppy is mounted via
> subfs ?

I don't think so. If I actually have the floppy mounted at the same time
in Linux (like mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy) dosemu reads the floppy
much faster.

Then you need to be careful not to write to the floppy via both methods
though: either dosemu or the mounted directory can be written to but not
both at the same time or you'll face filesystem corruption.

lredir a: linux\fs/floppy
is another (safe) alternative.

Bart

Re: Floppy disk very slow

[Lawrence F Povirk]

Yes, I've noted this also, on Fedora 2.  Larry

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, Bernhard Bialas wrote:

> Hello,
> I have discovered the following strange behavior of the floppy disk:
> -accessing from hard disk to floppy (via f: a: command) takes approx. 10 sec
> - then, the " dir" command takes from 1-5 minutes to list the directory
> content
> Also no chance to start any program from the disk.
> Under Linux the behavior is normal: an "ls" give in approx 1 sec the content
> of the floppy.
>
> My question: have some other people made a simillar experience?
> The test are done with dosemu 1.2.2 and 1.3.1
> Linux System is SuSE 9.1 (kernel 2.6.5 (with some patches)),on a AMD Duron
> system.
> Maybe has this something to do with the fact that the floppy is mounted via
> subfs ?
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Best regards
> Bernhard Bialas
> -
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