# Writing to floppy drive freezes system.



## ikreos (Dec 25, 2011)

```
% uname -a
FreeBSD xxxx.xxxx 8.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE #0: Wed Jun 29 06:21:59 EDT 2011     xxxx@xxxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL  i386
```

I was preparing to test 9.0-RC3 on an old laptop I have. I chose to use the memory stick installation as the CD-ROM drive in my laptop doesn't work very well anymore and it has no floppy drive, nor does it boot from USB memory sticks. So I planned on using an external USB floppy drive I have and a boot disk to get it to boot from the USB memory stick (which went well actually).

I have an internal floppy drive on my main desktop system (yes I still find floppy disks useful). I have not used it before preparing my tools for the laptop. I tried to dd a floppy image to a disk and the system froze with no response whatsoever, changing the keyboard caps and numlock status didn't respond either so I knew it was completely froze.

Mounting, reading, and dd'ing from a disk works as expected, no freezing occurred. Copying files and dd'ing to a mounted/unmounted disk results in a little bit of activity, (it is indeed writing data) and then a complete system freeze.

I have checked log files for any errors but the system freezes before anything (if there is) can be written to the logs. Using my external USB floppy drive I was able to complete my tools to get the laptop up and running (it worked quite well surprisingly). The freezing occurs as both root and a normal user. Does anyone have any ideas as to the cause, or has had a similar experience? I have several of the same floppy drive so I'm going to swap it out for one of the other ones (if I remember where I put them) and see if the dive was faulty.

Thanks.


----------



## ikreos (Dec 25, 2011)

Tried two other floppy drives (same model) and get the same results. Complete freeze within 0-2 seconds of initiating write. Can't even do a newfs on them. I have other older floppy drives but they are in storage or other systems. Guess I'll try some live CD's of 8.2 and 9.0 and see if I get the same results.


----------



## ikreos (Dec 25, 2011)

```
fdc0: <floppy drive controller (FDE)> port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on acpi0
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
```

More testing info. Tried a 9.0-RC3 live system. Was able to read and write (writing successful but data was wrong). However after reading or writing a system reset was triggered as if the reset button on the tower was pressed or if a shutdown -r now was issued but without a warning. Could this be an ACPI conflict?

Trying an 8.2 live system resulted in complete freeze, same as my installed system.

Can't even use the fd* tools to write to the floppy drive.


----------



## jb_fvwm2 (Dec 25, 2011)

Similar experience (a thumbdrive), if rather than 
	
	



```
mmv file /mnt
```
 instead 
	
	



```
cp -iv *.tgz /mnt
```
 the latter case, one may have to wait five-ten minutes for the prompt to appear. May or may not help with this problem.


----------

