USB floppy drive

AmigaOne X1000 platform specific issues related to Linux only.
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xeno74
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Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:58 am

USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

Hi All,

I still have many 3½ inch floppy disks here but I don't have a floppy drive in my AmigaOnes. I bought a CSL external USB floppy drive for €12.48 last week. You can also find it at Amazon.co.uk for £11.99. I successfully tested it with my X5000 and X1000 today. It works really fantastic with our kernels! I can mount, read and write my floppy disks without any problems. Additionally I can boot from a floppy disk with QEMU and access it in a virtual machine.
I was able to access very old files today and it was exciting.
Please note: If you want to boot from a floppy disk with QEMU or access it in a virtual QEMU machine then you have to remove the write protection of a floppy disk.

Screenshot of openSUSE Tumbleweed PPC64 and Windows NT x86 (QEMU) with access to the CSL floppy drive:

Image

Cheers,
Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
Posts: 9349
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:58 am

Re: USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't show the USB floppy drive but you can mount it with the command udisks.

For example:

Code: Select all

udisks --mount /dev/sdd
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Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

Hi All,

I was able to create and format a NTFS partition on a floppy disk with Fienix today.

Log:

Code: Select all

root@Fienix:/home/fienix# /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdd

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.33.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 
First sector (1-2879, default 1): 
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (1-2879, default 2879): 

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 1.4 MiB.

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list all codes): L

 0  Empty           24  NEC DOS         81  Minix / old Lin bf  Solaris        
 1  FAT12           27  Hidden NTFS Win 82  Linux swap / So c1  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 2  XENIX root      39  Plan 9          83  Linux           c4  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 3  XENIX usr       3c  PartitionMagic  84  OS/2 hidden or  c6  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 4  FAT16 <32M      40  Venix 80286     85  Linux extended  c7  Syrinx         
 5  Extended        41  PPC PReP Boot   86  NTFS volume set da  Non-FS data    
 6  FAT16           42  SFS             87  NTFS volume set db  CP/M / CTOS / .
 7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT 4d  QNX4.x          88  Linux plaintext de  Dell Utility   
 8  AIX             4e  QNX4.x 2nd part 8e  Linux LVM       df  BootIt         
 9  AIX bootable    4f  QNX4.x 3rd part 93  Amoeba          e1  DOS access     
 a  OS/2 Boot Manag 50  OnTrack DM      94  Amoeba BBT      e3  DOS R/O        
 b  W95 FAT32       51  OnTrack DM6 Aux 9f  BSD/OS          e4  SpeedStor      
 c  W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52  CP/M            a0  IBM Thinkpad hi ea  Rufus alignment
 e  W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53  OnTrack DM6 Aux a5  FreeBSD         eb  BeOS fs        
 f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54  OnTrackDM6      a6  OpenBSD         ee  GPT            
10  OPUS            55  EZ-Drive        a7  NeXTSTEP        ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/
11  Hidden FAT12    56  Golden Bow      a8  Darwin UFS      f0  Linux/PA-RISC b
12  Compaq diagnost 5c  Priam Edisk     a9  NetBSD          f1  SpeedStor      
14  Hidden FAT16 <3 61  SpeedStor       ab  Darwin boot     f4  SpeedStor      
16  Hidden FAT16    63  GNU HURD or Sys af  HFS / HFS+      f2  DOS secondary  
17  Hidden HPFS/NTF 64  Novell Netware  b7  BSDI fs         fb  VMware VMFS    
18  AST SmartSleep  65  Novell Netware  b8  BSDI swap       fc  VMware VMKCORE 
1b  Hidden W95 FAT3 70  DiskSecure Mult bb  Boot Wizard hid fd  Linux raid auto
1c  Hidden W95 FAT3 75  PC/IX           bc  Acronis FAT32 L fe  LANstep        
1e  Hidden W95 FAT1 80  Old Minix       be  Solaris boot    ff  BBT            
Hex code (type L to list all codes): 7
Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'HPFS/NTFS/exFAT'.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Syncing disks.

root@Fienix:/home/fienix# /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdd -l
Disk /dev/sdd: 1.4 MiB, 1474560 bytes, 2880 sectors
Disk model: USB UFDD 061M   
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device     Boot Start   End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdd1           1  2879    2879  1.4M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
root@Fienix:/home/fienix# /sbin/mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdd1
Cluster size has been automatically set to 4096 bytes.
Initializing device with zeroes: 100% - Done.
Creating NTFS volume structures.
mkntfs completed successfully. Have a nice day.
After that I was able to mount the NTFS partition of the floppy disk.

Code: Select all

root@Fienix:/# /sbin/mount.ntfs /dev/sdd1 /floppy

root@Fienix:/# /sbin/blkid | grep /dev/sdd1
/dev/sdd1: UUID="18CC28E21311B3D2" TYPE="ntfs" PTTYPE="dos"
Then I created an entry in the file /etc/fstab for the NTFS partition of the floppy disk.

/etc/fstab:

Code: Select all

/dev/sdd1 /floppy   ntfs   rw,user,auto,exec,utf8,uid=1000   0   0
After a reboot I could access the NTFS partition without any problems! :-) I successfully created directories and files with my user.

A better solution with automatic file system detection:

Code: Select all

/dev/sdd1 /floppy   auto   rw,user,auto,exec,utf8,uid=1000   0   0
/var/log/syslog:

Code: Select all

Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix systemd[1]: Mounting /floppy...
Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix ntfs-3g[1633]: Version 2017.3.23AR.3 integrated FUSE 28
Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix ntfs-3g[1633]: Mounted /dev/sdd1 (Read-Write, label "", NTFS 3.1)
Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix ntfs-3g[1633]: Cmdline options: rw,nosuid,nodev,utf8,uid=1000,user,exec
Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix ntfs-3g[1633]: Mount options: nosuid,nodev,utf8,user,exec,allow_other,nonempty,relatime,rw,default_permissions,fsname=/dev/sdd1,blkdev,blksize=4096
Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix ntfs-3g[1633]: Global ownership and permissions enforced, configuration type 7
Aug 15 13:28:41 Fienix systemd[1]: Mounted /floppy.
Cheers,
Christian
Last edited by xeno74 on Thu Aug 15, 2019 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

Better solution with the UUID of the NTFS partition:

/etc/fstab:

Code: Select all

UUID=18CC28E21311B3D2 /floppy   auto   rw,user,auto,exec,utf8,uid=1000   0   0
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

But there is a problem with the solutions above. If you don't have a floppy disk inserted in your floppy disk drive during the boot then Fienix automatically boots to the rescue target. I would recommend you to use Systemd automount.

Best solution with the UUID and the Systemd automount:

/etc/fstab:

Code: Select all

UUID=18CC28E21311B3D2 /floppy   auto   rw,user,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.device-timeout=10,noauto,exec,utf8,uid=1000   0   0
If you change to the /floppy directory then Systemd mounts the floppy disk automatically.
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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Hypex
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by Hypex »

xeno74 wrote:Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't show the USB floppy drive but you can mount it with the command udisks.

For example:

Code: Select all

udisks --mount /dev/sdd
That's strange. I've tested my old Ubuntu 9.04 install on my X1000. Running with a 4.19 kernel. And the USB floppy drive mounted disks when inserted. I did have some issue where I tried some "Non DOS" disks and this seemed to put the driver off. But I just pulled out the drive and plugged it back in again. And it came back to auto mounting.
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musa
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by musa »

Hi Christian
Could it be any type of usb floppy drive
thk Peter
AmigaX1000
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xeno74
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

musa wrote:Hi Christian
Could it be any type of usb floppy drive
thk Peter
I think yes.
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http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by xeno74 »

Do you still use floppy disks?

Image
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Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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musa
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Re: USB floppy drive

Post by musa »

Hi Christian
No my Amiga is dead and I do not think I can afford to acquire a new one so for me it is goodbye unfortunately.
I'm very sorry but I do not believe there is any repair option. I've talked a bit with Amigakit but it's been a while since I heard from them.
I do not think they think there is anything to put up.
Regards Peter
AmigaX1000
Follow me on twitter @basjoo_dk
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