Floppy light always on..?

LittleOne · #1 8th November 2010, 05:04 PM

In this old tower ("e-machine"), running F-14, the floppy light is always on...
Is this just because the tower is an antique..? Is there a code to correct it..? Is it OK to just disconnect the wires from the floppy unit, or would that create excess current build-up in circuits without loads..?

I'm asking, because when I first started self-larnin' on computers, that I got from garage sales, some of the modifications I did sometimes caused a lot of smoke and crackles.. One experiment even detonated the CPU, blew the plastic right off the chip with a Bang, exposing the printed cct... And I be out the next Saturday at garage sales, searching for more towers to destroy...

sonoran · #2 8th November 2010, 05:19 PM

Maybe unplug the floppy cable from the motherboard, El Destructo?

***glennzo*** · #3 8th November 2010, 06:14 PM

Yeah. Just unplug it. It shouldn't matter at all.

LittleOne · #4 8th November 2010, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonoran

Maybe unplug the floppy cable from the motherboard, El Destructo?

"El Destructo"..? What.. you never exploded a CPU, or had white-smoke streaming out of a tower..? At least there weren't any flames.. yet...
Back in electronics school, we had a teacher's helper technician who was forever playing evil little jokes on all of us with charged power supply caps.. so this one day I got him back..
I rewired an old tube set TV's 30-k flyback to run back into the caps, then had him check my work, and KaBANG! went a cap when he switched it on.. He jumped back and fell on his bum.. The whole class applauded most whole heartedly... He stopped messing with charged caps... I bet he still has nightmares of it...

I unplugged the floppy...

stoat · #5 8th November 2010, 08:52 PM

It's not difficult to connect the cable to a floppy drive the wrong way. The floppy connector on the mainboard is usually keyed better making it harder to do there. Anyway, it's at least one way for the floppy drive's light to stay on. I've done it. If you want to try again, look at the circuit board of the floppy near the cable connector for a little number "1". The red stripe on the floppy cable goes on that side of the connector. It's usually the side towards the power connector (for my Teac floppy drives, anyway).

LittleOne · #6 10th November 2010, 01:05 AM

The connectors are correct... I thought about this little glitch, and about how slow this box is, and all the grief it gives me.. and off to the "computer library" I went, and asked if they would sell me a reasonable tower, drives not required"... Got this here little Dell DHP 260, for 10-bucks... Good thing I just happen to have some big ram sticks that fit it... A Fedora hd dropped in and worked prime right off.. and the floppy lite isn't on... This "pain in the fumusport" e-machine is on its way to the computer dump...

mkruger · #7 27th March 2011, 10:08 PM

I had the same problem....floppy light on.

It went away with:

Code:

modprobe floppy
ls /dev/fd0
/dev/fd0

I am pretty new to Linux, so I am unsure whether mounting this way would be persistent after a reboot.....but it got me at least temporary access to my diskette drive. Anyway...

Code:

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
mount: mount point /media/floppy does not exist

mkdir /media/floppy

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

stoat · #8 27th March 2011, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mkruger

...I am unsure whether mounting this way would be persistent after a reboot...

It won't. But you can add that modprobe command to /etc/rc.local and it will execute every time you boot.

A couple of versions ago, Fedora stopped including the floppy module in the init stuff at boot time. There are several ways to deal with it, but the rc.local idea is the simplest IMO. Anyway, I didn't know not loading the floppy module made the floppy light come on. I believe you though.

Also, you may not need to bother with mount commands and fstab for the floppy (unless you just want to). I don't anyway. You should be able to insert a floppy disk and double-click the floppy drive in your file manager and have it mount that way. It should automatically mount to /media/floppy when you do that.

mkruger · #9 27th March 2011, 10:47 PM

Thank you for the fix. I will give that a try as the floppy LED did come back on after a reboot.

It's not surprising floppy support is no longer enabled by default at boot. With flash drives becoming ubiquitous, nobody sells floppy drives any more. And I recently read the only remaining floppy disk manufacturer has ceased production (or will be soon). Quite remarkable really....the floppy drive has outlasted most Honda's.