Deprecating / Removing floppy drive support

[Alex Kozlov]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 10:26:17AM +0100, Willem Jan Withagen wrote:
> On 03/12/2017 13:18, Alex Kozlov wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 03, 2017 at 11:56:27AM +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> >> In message <20171203113341.GA68792 at ravenloft.kiev.ua>, Alex Kozlov writes:
> >>>> On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 10:27:57 +0000
> >>>> "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Incidentally FreeBSD is/was the only modern OS which could
> >>>>> still read 8" floppies.
> >>> Well, with proper* cable you can connect 8" drive to fdc and read
> >>> it pretty much on any OS that supports floppies.
> >> Uhm... no ?
> >>
> >> Very few OS's have had 8" format compatible settings since CP/M
> >> and even fewer handle the track46 pin correctly on write.
> > I'd done it in dos, I read about successful setups for Linux and
> > Windows(older). Anecdotally, I was not able to do it in FreeBSD.
> Never too late to learn....
>
> I still think I have my (from 1982) 8" disks around with a ported CP/M 
> system to a TRS-80 like system... But ever since the Intel ASM/CPM 
> developement stack died on the University they have been lying round for
> nostalgic reasons. And the hardware got dumped with the last move about
> 12 years ago.
>
> But it never ever occured to me that FreeBSD would be able to do 8", if
> alone for the controller. But now I learn that it could have worked...
> Cool :)
Theoretically, it should work. In practice, as bde@ suggested, you may need
to use UP i386 kernel and perhaps downgrade to earlier version of FreeBSD.
Also you need to somehow acquire 34-to-50 cable or adaptor*. I made mine,
so perhaps that why I failed :)
You don't need to worry about tg43 signal if you don't plan to write on these
floppies.

In the end, after burning weekend on this little project, I realized that I
risk to burn much more time, so I just ordered kryoflux.

*) something like this http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/h/c8ssc.jpg


-- 
Alex