lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2003]   [Dec]   [12]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: PROBLEM: floppy motor spins when floppy module not installed
On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] Måns Rullgård wrote:

> "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com> writes:
>
> > On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] Måns Rullgård wrote:
> >
> >> Dale Mellor <dale@dmellor.dabsol.co.uk> writes:
> >>
> >> > 1. Floppy motor spins when floppy module not installed.
> >>
> >> It's a known problem. Some broken BIOSes don't turn off the motor
> >> after probing for a disk. One solution is to change the boot priority
> >> in the BIOS settings so the hard disk is tried before floppy. If you
> >> ever need to boot from a floppy, you can change it back.
> >
> > It is not a broken BIOS! The BIOS timer that ticks 18.206 times
> > per second has an ISR that, in addition to keeping time, turns
> > OFF the FDC motor after two seconds of inactivity. This ISR is taken
> > away by Linux. Therefore Linux must turn off that motor! It is a
> > Linux bug, not a BIOS bug. Linux took control away from the BIOS
> > during boot.
>
> OK, but why doesn't it affect all machines?
>
If you leave the FDC software in the kernel, the FDC software
sets up everything and turns off the motor. If you have the
FDC as a module, you have nothing in there to turn off the
motor until you install the module.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:59    [W:0.075 / U:0.900 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site