On a sunny day (Sat, 11 Aug 2018 01:38:00 +1200) it happened
nospam.Henri.Derksen@f1208.n280.z2.binkp.net (Henri Derksen) wrote in
:

>That was/is also my point of interest.
>May be you can measure what it draws in Amps.?

That would require cutting the lead and putting an amp meter in,
I'd like to keep it in one piece.


>I also digged out my Iomega 3,5" 1,44 MB USB2-Floppy diskdrive.
>This afternoon I got it working, and could even write a new Test directory
>and a large textfile in it.

Good!


>This evening/night It dont want to work again, at the first attempts.
>I unplugged everything, including RJ45 EtherNet Cable, and only left the USB
>dongle for wireless keyboard and mouse and the USB-floppy drive, and now it
>works when plugged in into the bottum ports as close to the Pi3B print.
>I think a powered USB2 hub shall be necessarry for the power hunger of this
>floppydrive.

Yes, P3 uses even more power than my old raspi.


>JP> root@raspberrypi:~# dmesg
>
>What a long list does that command "dmesg" on Raspbian Stretch gives to me.
>
>JP> Now to find a floppy..


>Yould better try a new emty floppy disk.
>I even have some new unused box of floppy disks.

I have a big box full of old floppies, but all are write protected,
backups of projects I did long time ago.


>JP> Let's see what we got from the boot sector etc:
>JP> root@raspberrypi:~# hexedit q1
>
>He, were did you get that "hexedit" from?

Looks like I did
 apt-get hexedit
It is the hexadecimal editor, one of the most useful tools I have.


>JP> root@raspberrypi:~# fdisk /dev/sda
>JP> You will not be able to write the partition table.
>JP> Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF
>JP> disklabel
>JP> Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x72867184.
>JP> Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
>JP> After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.
>JP> Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by
>JP> w(rite)
>
>You really did not have a floppy disk with some free space to write on?

Perhaps, but did not want to take a change with my backups.

>JP> Command (m for help): p
>
>What does P do?

Once you started
fdisk /dev/sda
you can type more commands, typing 'm' shows those, command 'p' prints the
partition table.
As it shows no partition table (sda1 for example) that means the whole floppy
is used.
So that is why I cannot mount /dev/sda1, but must mount /dev/sda.
Be careful with fdisk, it can delete and create partitions too.

>JP> I am not going to write to any of these disks, and have no free 3.5 inch
>JP> disk.
>
>Strange. It is a good idea to always have some media with free space.
>You never know what comes on your way you want to store rapidly.
>So always have some free floppy's, USB-sticks and microSDcards etc..
>Of course you could make an image of that floppy and write that to another
>medium with enough free space to store that image, i.e. harddisk.
>Then you can testwrite that floppy and after that write back that backupped
>image you earlier made.
>
>JP> So it works, write should work too on a not write protected disk.
>JP> Same for other filesystems.
>
>Yes.
>
>JP> What surprises me, is that the rapi wallwart (voeding in Dutch) does not
>JP> go through its knees.
>JP> Must take some current that drive motor seeking back and forward.
>
>The supply power is not the problem, what the Pi lets through does.
>It is NOT the 4 x 0.5 Amps total for each USB2.0 ports, you would expect.
>
>Even if you have the original 2.5 Amps power supply, and the Pi takes 0.5 A
>from it, there are NOT 2.0 Amps available for USB devices! ;-(.
>So a powered USB hub is needed for this USB2 floppy device.
>
>Henri.

I got these raspis and power supplies from https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/
(no connection with them) so far the stuff works OK.


Yes, well I had a wireless keyboard adaptor in one USB slot, and the floppy in
the other,
no need to reboot even, this is an old raspi with only 2 USB slots I use for
webserver.
Usually my rapis crash if you plug _anything_ in the USB.

Free floppies? The whole thing is only 1.44 MB, why still use floppies except
to get back old code from backups?
What will you use it for?

Greetings
Jan

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