Floppy problems in 5.3

[pbowen at fastmail.fm]

Sirs:

I'm having a problem doing "newfs" to a floppy on a new installation 
(5.3-stable). I tried
changing to a new floppy and get the same thing.

# fdformat -f 1440 /dev/fd0
Format 1440K floppy `/dev/fd0'? (y/n): y
Processing VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV done.
# bsdlabel -B -w /dev/fd0 fd1440
# newfs /dev/fd0
newfs: wtfs: 512 bytes at sector 2879: Input/output error

--or--

# newfs_msdos /dev/fd0
/dev/fd0: 2840 sectors in 355 FAT12 clusters (4096 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=8 res=1 nft=2 rde=512 sec=2880 mid=0xf0 spf=2 spt=18 hds=2 hid=0
newfs_msdos: /dev/fd0: Input/output error
#

If I take a linux formatted floppy, mount it, then "ls" on the mount point, I
can get the dir listing. Or if I "less" a file on the floppy I can read the
contents. Any attempt to use "vi" or to write to the floppy fails with
another "Input/Output error". Of course, the same drives and floppies mount, 
read, and write under Minix, Slackware-10.0 and FreeBSD 4.11.

# uname -a
FreeBSD  5.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #0: Fri Nov  5 04:19:18 UTC 2004
root at harlow.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
#

devfs.conf contains...

# allow fd0
[devfsrules_fd0=10]
add path fd0
add path fd0 mode 0660 

and rc.conf contains...

#devfs_system_ruleset="devfsrules_fd0"

I noticed in UPDATING that floppy under pci was broken at one point. Is that 
still the case and am I seeintg that broken-ness?

Can you help? TIA.