From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG  Tue Sep 21 12:39:08 2004
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To: Rostislav Krasny <rosti_bsd@yahoo.com>
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 21 Sep 2004 05:33:53 PDT."
             <20040921123353.41103.qmail@web14823.mail.yahoo.com> 
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:39:05 +0200
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cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: new fdc(4) and new fdcontrol(8) behavior (5.3-BETA5) 
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In message <20040921123353.41103.qmail@web14823.mail.yahoo.com>, Rostislav Kras
ny writes:
>> Any time 'fdcontrol [anyflag] /dev/fd0' is running the floppy drive
>> is activated, i.e. the LED of the drive is alight and its heads are
>> moving for some period of time.
>
>This is on 5.3-BETA5. On 5.3-BETA4 the the floppy drive isn't activated
>during fdcontrol(8) run.

In order to properly detect if there is floppy in the drive it is necessary
to step the head at least one cylinder.

Some of the more energy-concious floppy drives powers the step-motor
for the heads from the same supply as the spindle motor, and therefore
the motor has to be started before the step operation happens.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.