At 12:12 AM 7/18/00 -1000, David Jones wrote:
>Two small questions:
>
>1. Will a Linux boot floppy work when booted from an
>LS-120 super floppy drive?
Depends on the mobo. If the BIOS has support for booting from an LS-120,
regular (1.44 mB) boot floppies will boot from it. I've seen reports that
LS-120s choke on the "superformatted" sizes of floppies (e.g., 1.67 mB) but
can't verify them personally.
>2. Does Linux support the LS120 drive at all?
Yes. You need to add in "ide-floppy" support, either compiled into the
kernel or as a module. All 2.2.x kernels I've checked have it as a compile
option.
I have NOT been able to get Linux to boot from an LS-120 disk. This seems to
be a geometry problem -- Linux and the BIOS see different geometries, and
this causes LILO to choke. I've seen reports that syslinux will work from an
LS-120 but have not been able to replicate them. I've also seen reports that
one can do a two-step boot process, booting from a regular floppy, then
inserting an LS-120 disk to use as the root filesystem, but I have not tried
to replicate that procedure.
If you do buy one and get it working, please send a report of what you did.
Use of LS-120s appears to be murky, with a lot of misinformation
circulating, and few reliable reports of what configurations work. Be
cautious in relying on untested recipes for getting it working.
--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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