[SWLUG] hot swappable floppy/cd drive

[Bryn Reeves]

On 16:23 Thu 09 Oct     , Tim Bonnell wrote:
> 
> I have just received a couple of new DELL optiplex sx270 machines to test,
> so obviously I wiped the pre-installed hard drive, and installed Linux (SuSE
> 8.1pro).
> 
> The problem I have is that these machines come with a swapable floppy / CD /
> CD-RW drive. When the system boots it detects the CD, but I then want to
> write to a floppy (to install grub) but the kernel says that /dev/fd0 isnt a
> proper device.
> 
> Do I need to load a kernel module, and if so, which one?
> 
> Until I get a grub floppy written I am not going to be able to boot with the
> floppy installed.
> 
> Anybody know what I'm talking about?
> 
> Regards,	Tim
> 
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Hi Tim,
This is just a guess, but I think the sx270 might have an ide floppy
drive (does it plug into the same connector as the cd?). If that's 
the case, you'll need the ide-floppy driver compiled in or available
as a module. I checked a redhat machine here and the standard kernel
doesn't include it as either. SuSE may vary though. It's in the 
'ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support -> IDE, ATA and ATAPI Block devices' section
of the kernel config.

The user manual's here on dell's site:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/opsx270/en/ug/index.htm

but it's not much help!
There's an italian spec here:
http://www.euro.dell.com/downloads/emea/products/optix/optix_sx270_it.pdf

which has the floppy in the ide section.. might be worth a try?

Cheers

Bryn