USB Floppy drive

[Bobmeister]

I am still researching, but part of that would be to post a question here on the forum to see if someone knows.

I am an experienced Fedora 1 user on my desktop, and also have it installed on a Dell Inspiron without problems.

I just ordered an ASUS A2H laptop for myself (a very basic machine, but it's mostly for e-mail, web, and minor office stuff) and I'm planning on installing Fedora 1 on it as well. I have all of the hardware planned out and anticipate no problems.

However, it does NOT have a floppy drive. It uses and external USB floppy drive. I have never used one of these before, so my question is:

How will Fedora Recognize this (by the way, it's USB 2.0)? Will it see is as a SCSI (sda) and "install" during the install process, creating an fstab entry? If NOT, does anyone know what it will show up as? Will it identify itself as a floppy drive and be addressed as /dev/fd0? In anticipation, I might be getting overworked about this, as I won't really NEED it anyway, but I'm just wondering. I use a flash key drive that works great in Fedora (sda1), but these issues pertain to extending to possible booting off of the USB device as well (rescue floppy)..etc.

Thanks in advance for anyone who migh have had experience here and can help.

[ghenry]

Hi,

your usb floppy will be picked up as a usb mass storage device., much the same as your usb key.

You will find it on /dev/sda1 usually, if your usb key is also plugged in, it might be /dev/sdb1 etc.

You would as root issue:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/floppy

Just to confirm this I searched on google and found this:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/22626

I HTH.

[Bobmeister]

Thanks, ghenry...I had found a couple of references to this as well. That begs the question about setting up my fstab, however. I'm sure that if I have EITHER of the two plugged in, it will show up as sda1..and of course, it COULD be that if I have BOTH plugged in, ONE of them would go to sdb1...is there a way to permanantly assign them so that I can set up my fstab where I can mount either or both whenever I want without "wondering" which is which when plugged in?

It might sound like a stupid question, but I'm not too experienced with the with the way the SCSI emulation "decides" what to assign. It would be nice for me, since I might be using ONE or the OTHER, or BOTH at the same time, to ASSIGN the sda or sdb to each ahead of time, post it all in my fstab, and not worry about what is what.

Can that be done easily?

Thanks again...and then I'll shut up!

[ghenry]

Yeah should be. Once they are detected first time, they should be the same each time.

cdrecord -scanbus

will also show what's what when they are inserted.

My fstab (can be done loads of ways, mine might not be the best and I am using 2.6.5-rc2)

/dev/sda1               /mnt/USBdisk            vfat    noauto,users,exec,rw,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sdb1               /mnt/USBdisk1           vfat    noauto,users,exec,rw,umask=000 0 0

I HTH.

[Bobmeister]

Thanks again....I look forward to getting the laptop and configuring it! I'll be using the 2.4.22 kernel...but I'm planning on going to Fedora Core 2 (probably a complete clean install) when it comes out, but I'm not anticipating any trouble with the ASUS laptop as I'm told that they are pretty Linux friendly!

Unfortunately, for work, I'll have to have Windows on the "other side" but but I'll be using Linux for about 90 percent of the time...it's just too cool to NOT use!

Thanks again for you help...I'm sure that I'll figure it out...

[ghenry]

Let us know how you get on.

[Bobmeister]

ghenry, I'm so sorry that I didn't bet back to you giving you results. I have Fedora Core 1 running flawlessly on the ASUS laptop. EVERYTHING WORKS! Anyway, the USB Floppy was recognized as sda right away...a simple entry in fstab and off and running...so all of my worries were completely unnecessary. I can also boot of of the USB floppy as this BIOS is OK for that.

Thanks for all of the help

[ghenry]

Cool.

Marked as resolved.