floppy disk hardware failure ?

[Lowell Gilbert]

"Lee Harr" <missive at hotmail.com> writes:

> Is this a hardware problem?  I get the same thing with all disks I
> have tried.

Yes, probably.  

I'm guessing it's an MS-DOS type floppy, being mounted with "mount -t msdos".  
You might try the mtools, which parse the filesystem a little
differently, but it's unlikely to matter when the very first block is failing.