From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Feb 10 13:34:53 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 517D1D45 for ; Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:34:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from hans@beastielabs.net) Received: from mail.beastielabs.net (beasties.demon.nl [82.161.3.114]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D378ADBD for ; Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:34:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: from merom.hotsoft.nl (merom.hotsoft.nl [192.168.0.12]) by mail.beastielabs.net (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id r1ADTnYw097029; Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:29:49 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from hans@beastielabs.net) Message-ID: <5117A0CD.6060904@beastielabs.net> Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:29:49 +0100 From: Hans Ottevanger User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130129 Thunderbird/17.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Daniel O'Connor" Subject: Re: Time to kill fdc ? References: <79955.1360494404@critter.freebsd.dk> <9EDF355D-07F7-4315-B00E-B181C674D763@gsoft.com.au> <80113.1360496675@critter.freebsd.dk> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Poul-Henning Kamp , current@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:34:53 -0000 On 02/10/13 12:46, Daniel O'Connor wrote: > > On 10/02/2013, at 22:14, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: >>> I've used it in 7.x to read install.cfg for a semi automated install process. >>> >>> I didn't see any panics, but then again install.cfg is a pretty small file. >> >> On 7.x I got consistent panics about bounce-buffers. > > > Hmm strange, I am not sure I have requisite hardware at work any more, all of the suitable machines were shipped. > > In any case I am in no position to maintain FDC as I no longer user it as part of my install process. > > -- I still use those old 1.4 Mbyte diskettes quite often (ancient archives of experimental data, exchanging data with retro-computers, etc.), but these days I mostly (but not always) use a USB diskette drive. But I just did an experiment on an old Pentium 4 system here, using the fdc driver and 8.3-STABLE as of early December (r243900). I read several diskettes using "dd /dev/fd0 /dev/null" and everything went flawlessly. The only issue I have seen with fdc over the years/releases is that around 7.x old DD diskettes (maximum of 720 kbyte) stopped working. Attempting to write them failed with a lot of retries, but never resulted in a panic. Strange enough they do work with my USB drive ... Could it be that the drive that Poul-Henning is using is worn out a bit? Not that the system should be panicking in that case, but it could at least explain why we see different thing happening. Kind regards, Hans