From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265251AbTLLPDL (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:03:11 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265252AbTLLPDL (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:03:11 -0500 Received: from chaos.analogic.com ([204.178.40.224]:42113 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265251AbTLLPDD convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:03:03 -0500 Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:04:47 -0500 (EST) From: "Richard B. Johnson" X-X-Sender: root@chaos Reply-To: root@chaos.analogic.com To: =?iso-8859-1?q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: PROBLEM: floppy motor spins when floppy module not installed In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <16345.51504.583427.499297@l.a> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] Måns Rullgård wrote: > Dale Mellor writes: > > > 1. Floppy motor spins when floppy module not installed. > > It's a known problem. Some broken BIOSes don't turn off the motor > after probing for a disk. One solution is to change the boot priority > in the BIOS settings so the hard disk is tried before floppy. If you > ever need to boot from a floppy, you can change it back. > > -- > Måns Rullgård > mru@kth.se It is not a broken BIOS! The BIOS timer that ticks 18.206 times per second has an ISR that, in addition to keeping time, turns OFF the FDC motor after two seconds of inactivity. This ISR is taken away by Linux. Therefore Linux must turn off that motor! It is a Linux bug, not a BIOS bug. Linux took control away from the BIOS during boot. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.