Hi,
[There's been no replies to my message to linux-usb-users so I'm
wondering it is better suited for linux-usb-devel. Apologies if I'm
still in the wrong place.]
I've spent the last few hours stumbling around understanding what's
involved in getting this Sony Vaio PCG-Z505JE's USB floppy drive working
under Debian Woody with 2.4.18. My one remaining sticking point was
formatting a disc, especially since I move discs between systems with
non-DOS formats, e.g. a five 1024-byte sectors per track, 80 tracks, 2
sides, 800KB format AKA Acorn ADFS D/E format.
After soon realising that fdformat wouldn't work I tried sformat having
set up CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG but, although that initially detects the drive,
it soon locks the laptop requiring a reboot.
I've found usbmass-ufi10.pdf and see that there's a Format Unit command
so it's possible from the USB point of view. Does this need explicit
kernel support or is it possible that a user-space program could use
this as things stand in 2.4.18? libdsk is an excellent set of programs
for writing and detecting a myriad of floppy formats with various device
backends and it would seem a USB UFI one for Linux is an obvious
addition.
http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Unix/LibDsk/
Finally, I see there's a Read Format Capacity command to `Report current
media capacity and formattable capacities supported by media'. This
would seem to suggest that unless the hardware manufacturer knows about
all these old floppy formats, e.g. the Acorn one above, they aren't
available. Have I got that right? Is it possible to circumvent the UFI
and talk to the FDC behind it directly?
Thanks for your time,
Ralph.
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