Is it possible to use two floppy disk controllers under Linux?
YES. To use both controllers, boot the kernel with the lilo parameter
'floppy=two_fdc'. This parameter can be given on the lilo prompt, just after
the name of the kernel. It can also be specified in the /etc/lilo.conf file
by adding the following line:
append = "floppy=two_fdc"
It is assumed that your second controller lives at 0x370. If it uses
another I/O base-address, change this address in the floppy.c. The
drives on the second controller use the minor device numbers 128-131
for the generic device, and 132-255 for the fixed geometry device. The
following formula gives the minor number:
minor = fdc * 128 + geometry * 4 + unit
See the README file in fdutils for more details.
Is it possible to boot off these special format disks?
Yes. Make sure you have a version of lilo more recent than v18, and
put the following line into your /etc/lilo.defines before compiling
it:
-DXL_SECS=44
This enables Lilo to boot from disks with up to 44 sectors (i.e. more
than you'll ever see :-) ) It allows to boot from ED disks and from
disks with more sectors than usual (up to 21 on a HD disk, 42 on an ED
disk). However, 2m and Xdf disks cannot be booted using this method.
I get "Unable to allocate DMA memory" messages when trying to use
the floppy.
This happens whenever the memory is too scarce to allocate the floppy
driver's DMA buffer. It is possible to use the floppy driver without
DMA, and in that case, the floppy driver uses vmalloc'ed memory, which
is more readily available. In order to disable DMA, use the
floppy=nodma
boot flag. If you use the floppy driver as a
module, set the environment variable 'floppy' to 'dma'.
I have a Micron Millenia Transport.
Apparently, these laptops are supplied with a floppy controller which
doesn't support the fifo. Switch off the FIFO by adding
floppy=nofifo
to your Lilo command line.