WTF?! NO floppy in Lucid or in Meerkat!

[Karl Auer]

On Fri, 2010-09-24 at 16:35 +1000, Basil Chupin wrote:
> The floppy drive is not really catered for by Ubuntu Lucid, or even
> Meerkat (I've tried) now!
> [...]
> Alright, now that I have vented my frustrations accumulated over the
> past 2 days, does anyone have a REAL clue to make anything-Ubuntu
> recognise a floppy drive and display the contents of the disc in it and
> even format the disc? (Having stated this, the suggestion in the
> bug-discussion is to keep running an earlier version of Ubuntu - I think
> it is Karmic but don't quote me.)

A USB floppy will almost certainly work, as it's just USB mass storage
to the OS. You can get one of these very cheaply, or maybe even borrow
one. I've got one that will read and write 1.44Mb 3.5" floppies - if you
are desperate I'll send it up to you, just send it back when you are
done. I don't read floppies that often :-)

Another alternative is to install VirtualBox (free) and install the
necessary older version of Ubuntu as a guest system; see if it
understands the floppy drive. I'm not that confident in this solution,
because presumably it needs to use the host system's floppy subsystem,
but worth a shot maybe.

And a THIRD alternative is to send the floppy to me (or someone with a
drive that works) and get them to get what you need off it - the
executables or whatever. I can email the contents back to you and follow
up with the disk in snail mail. You can make a bootable USB stick and
put the bits on that for further use.

Regards, K.

PS: Are you the same Basil Chupin with whom I recall crossing swords
many years ago? Forgotten why now, time heals all :-)

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer/                   +61-428-957160 (mob)

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