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From: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Message-Id: <199709130501.HAA05383@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Subject: Re: Do *you* have problems with floppies?
To: Tor.Egge@idi.ntnu.no (Tor Egge)
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 07:01:42 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: dkelly@hiwaay.net, grog@lemis.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <199709130114.DAA01842@pat.idi.ntnu.no> from "Tor Egge" at Sep 13, 97 03:14:09 am
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> > The V's were in the "Reading intelligently..." phase.
> 
> I have similar experiences when iozone is running in the background.
> MB is ASUS P65UP5. AHA2940 and AHA2940UW scsi controllers.

Speaking of floppy problems and ASUS boards, I have had a board (for a
PPro200) replaced from ASUS because it had a bad floppy controller. The
problem appeared also in DOS or from the BIOS, and even when switching
cables, floppy drive, or disks, so I really think it was the hardware.

The symptom was that some sector started having corrupt data at some
point, and till the end of the sector. I couldn't find any significant
pattern (e.g. all zero, shifted data, etc.) in the rotten sectors.

Perhaps it would help if people experiencing the problem try to
'dd' some file containing random data to a floppy, and check:

- whether the problem repeats deterministically (same places etc);
- if the problem is during read or write (using a reliable system to
  write/read the disk.
- if the differences between the correct and the wrong data have
  some significant pattern such as the ones indicated above.

This would help to identify the problem better.

It takes some time. I spent several hours doing tests before returning
my motherboard, to be sure that it was really a problem with the MB and
not with anything else.

	Cheers
	Luigi