Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2017 10:40:54 +1100 (EST) From: Bruce Evans <brde@optusnet.com.au> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@komquats.com>, Hans Petter Selasky <hps@selasky.org>, Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com>, "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd-rwg@pdx.rh.cn85.dnsmgr.net>, "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" <arch@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Deprecating / Removing floppy drive support Message-ID: <20171204092457.I961@besplex.bde.org> In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfq%2BiRDJeNFP9hKZXrDmcZZPn4jqzYZDpspiohJ%2BFMj9hA@mail.gmail.com> References: <freebsd-rwg@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> <201712031655.vB3GtIME041023@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> <201712032005.vB3K5Zki034723@slippy.cwsent.com> <CANCZdfq%2BiRDJeNFP9hKZXrDmcZZPn4jqzYZDpspiohJ%2BFMj9hA@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sun, 3 Dec 2017, Warner Losh wrote: > On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 1:05 PM, Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@komquats.com> > wrote: > >> In message <201712031655.vB3GtIME041023@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>, "Rodney >> W. >> Gri >> mes" writes: The inner quoting is more broken than usual (split in the middle of rgrimes' name). >>> **RANT ON** >>> >>> Data point: OpenBSD still supports install from floppies.. so >>> my guess is that OpenBSD has been able to keep this code running, >>> it is a "Sad State of Affairs" that FreeBSD with 300+ developers >>> can not manage the same. As Eitan pointed out, its only a 1000 >>> lines so of code. Really now, we can manage to keep the mass >>> of clang and zfs running, but we can not keep a 1000 line fdc.c >>> running? Actually 5000+ lines of code: at least: - 2835 lines in dev/fdc - 195 lines in sys/fdcio.h - 335 lines in man4/fdc.4 - 2578 lines in fdcontrol, fdformat, fdread and fdwrite > The floppy driver itself is fine. It relies, however, on ISADMA working. It > got broken and nobody noticed. Also, FreeBSD has SMP while OpenBSD does > not, so that's been a much larger code velocity over all. > > Reading works OK. It's writing that fails. So this datapoint is consistent > with my experience. There's other issues that need to be fixed apart from > ISADMA, but those are minor in comparison. ISADMA worked for writing by fdformat and cp of 1 floppy under -current here. I used a UP i386 system with 1GB. If the bug only affects SMP, and64 or large memory, then it is easy to work around by not using these. Memory above 4GB is especially easy to avoid using a boot option. >> I've spent some time thinking about this while cleaning up the yard of old >> leaves today. All three of my machines downstairs still have fdc(4) >> controllers and take a poke at it. >> >> USB floppy does also work. The ufdformat USB floppy format (not yet >> committed, thank you bms@) also works in 12 (it didn't in 7 due to borked >> USB in 7). I've yet to decide whether to commit it as is or merge it into >> the existing fdformat. > > I'd commit it as is (ufdformat). It's functionality is quite a bit > different because the CDBs are much less expressive than the full NEC 765 > chip supports (which is itself a subset of what you can do on a floppy, but > I digress). So usb floppy drives can't even duplicate fdformat's functionality? There is also hard to replace functionality in other utilites. Bruce
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