Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:20:25 -0500 (EST) | From | "Richard B. Johnson" <> | Subject | Re: PROBLEM: floppy motor spins when floppy module not installed |
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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.
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