15.2. Block Device Drivers
15.2.1. floppy: floppy disk driver
This is the device driver for floppy disks. You need this in order to access a floppy disk in any way.
This LKM is documented in the file README.fd in the linux/drivers/block directory of the Linux source tree. For detailed up to date information refer directly to this file.
Note that if you boot (or might boot) from a floppy disk or with a root filesystem on a floppy disk, you must have this driver bound into the base kernel, because your system will need it before it has a chance to insert the LKM.
Example:
modprobe floppy 'floppy="daring two_fdc 0,thinkpad 0x8,fifo_depth"'
There is only one LKM parameter: floppy . But it contains many subparameters. The reason for this unusual parameter format is to be consistent with the way you would specify the same things in the kernel boot parameters if the driver were bound into the base kernel.
The value of floppy is a sequence of blank-delimited words. Each of those words is one of the following sequences of comma-delimited words:
- asus_pci
- daring
- 0,daring
- one_fdc
- address ,two_fdc
- two_fdc
- thinkpad
- 0,thinkpad
- nodma
- omnibook
- yesdma
- nofifo
Sets the bit mask of allowed drives to allow only units 0 and 1. Obsolete, as this is the default setting anyways
Tells the floppy driver that you have a well behaved floppy controller. This allows more efficient and smoother operation, but may fail on certain controllers. This may speed up certain operations.
Tells the floppy driver that your floppy controller should be used with caution.
Tells the floppy driver that you have only floppy controller (default).
Tells the floppy driver that you have two floppy controllers. The second floppy controller is assumed to be at address . This option is not needed if the second controller is at address 0x370, and if you use the 'cmos' option
Like above, but with default address
Tells the floppy driver that you have an IBM Thinkpad model notebook computer. Thinkpads use an inverted convention for the disk change line.
Tells the floppy driver that you don't have a Thinkpad.
Tells the floppy driver not to use DMA for data transfers. This is needed on HP Omnibooks, which don't have a workable DMA channel for the floppy driver. This option is also useful if you frequently get "Unable to allocate DMA memory" messages. Indeed, DMA memory needs to be continuous in physical memory, and is thus harder to find, whereas non-DMA buffers may be allocated in virtual memory. However, I advise against this if you have an FDC without a FIFO (8272A or 82072). 82072A and later are OK). You also need at least a 486 to use nodma. If you use nodma mode, I suggest you also set the FIFO threshold to 10 or lower, in order to limit the number of data transfer interrupts.
If you have a FIFO-able FDC, the floppy driver automatically falls back on non DMA mode if it can't find any DMA-able memory. If you want to avoid this, explicitly specify "yesdma".
Same as nodma .
Tells the floppy driver that a workable DMA channel is available (the default).
Disables the FIFO entirely. This is needed if you get "Bus master arbitration error" messages from your Ethernet card (or
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