T23 Floppy drive problem with Freespire.

[newyorkpaulie]

Just got into the Linux game and LOVE it so far. Only problem is that I can't get the File Manager to show a directory list for my floppies. It recognizes the drive, and reads the disk (you can hear the disk spinning), but the screen remains empty of files. Yes, the disks have files and yes the drive works with my other (WinXP) hard drive setup. It actually DID work for a while yesterday, but now nada. I have tinkered with settings and may have set something "wrong". Anyone have a clue? Thanks! By the way, my other utrabay drive, a DVD reader works great... shows DVDs and plays CDs.
Paul

[jruschme]

It appears that on some ThinkPad models, it is neccessary to add the option "floppy=thinkpad" to the kernel's boot options. (see http://fdutils.linux.lu/faq.html#thinkpad)

I don't know, though, if this is still necessary for T2x series notebooks.

[tom lightbody]

have you mounted the drive?

"mount /dev/fd0 /floppy"
"mount -t <filesystemtype> /dev/fd0 /media/floppy"

or whatever?

[newyorkpaulie]

Thanks for the responses and the code, but I don't think I need to run it. I tried opening File Manager and dragging the icon for the floppy to my task bar. Clicking this icon now reads and displays the disk contents correctly. Doesn't explain why clicking on the floppy drive icon in file manager didn't do the same. I don't like knowing WHY something works or doesn't though. That's part of the draw about learning something new though and I'll keep plugging. Love being able to get inside the system like in the "old days" when PCs were new. Windows shut the doors but Linux has opened them again for me.

Editing my original post:
Well, now I know that I have to get into the coding area because my original problem has resurfaced... no files showing up when I try accessing a floppy. I wish I knew how to put the advice given me to use, but logging on as root and trying the code in the terminal was a bust. I have to study this and do it right. Anyone know where to get the info for a newbie programmer... I've got experience with a lot of languages, but not unix. Thanks.

[newyorkpaulie]

I opened the Terminal Program and entered:
mount -t dev/fd0/floppy
and no longer have a problem. Curious thing is that a completely cold boot does not cause the problem to recur. Does mounting the drive once do it for all subsequent bootups? Whatever, I'm happy to have fixed this. Thanks for your help. Oh, by the way, I'm now running Linspire and prefer it to Freespire for a good many reasons.