Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2017 19:31:25 -0800 From: Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@komquats.com> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com>, "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" <arch@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Deprecating / Removing floppy drive support Message-ID: <201712030331.vB33VPmC023873@slippy.cwsent.com> In-Reply-To: Message from Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> of "Sat, 02 Dec 2017 20:09:25 -0700." <CANCZdfoukb=-YxU6Jp-fqfj18yaOTOuX746yJCgL0YgwNEK8Dg@mail.gmail.com>
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In message <CANCZdfoukb=-YxU6Jp-fqfj18yaOTOuX746yJCgL0YgwNEK8Dg@mail.gmail.c om> , Warner Losh writes: > On Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 7:18 PM, Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > I'd like to remove floppy drive support from FreeBSD: > > > > - The physical media is no longer produced > > > > There's still one company producing 3.5" floppies, though it's in super low > volume. And the media is still readily available. I can still buy them here in Victoria, BC. They're still floating around at $JOB. > > > > - Computers produced in the last 10-15 years don't have a floppy drive > > reader > > > > More like 8 years, but regardless of the actual year, that's also a weak > argument. Agreed. > > > > - There are still a few open bug reports relating to floppies(!) > > > > That would show it's still in use. I'd be willing to tackle them once I've worked through my current stack of projects. > > > > - Its several thousand lines of code that could be removed > > > > Clang is much more than that. > > > > Is there any reason to continue supporting floppy drives in FreeBSD 12.0+? > > > That's a backwards question to project. > > However, to make your argument legit: > > Floppy support has been decaying for years. It hasn't worked well since > FreeBSD 6, and was completely broken sometime after FreeBSD 10 was > branched. We lost support for having two floppies on the same bus around > FreeBSD 7. And using fdcontrol to set the format became tricking between > FreeBSD 8 and 9. Floppies written today contain garbage due to ISA DMA > breakages post FreeBSD 10. They simply don't work at all in 11, and nobody > has stepped up to fix them. (I tried last summer, and gave up and got a > kyroflux.com board instead). Floppies used to be important, but not any > more. We've lost the only platform that required one to boot off floppies > (pc98) and the older x86 that required it doesn't run FreeBSD anymore > anyway. We never supported fdc on non x86 platforms, so those aren't a > consideration. > > We do have some floppy support in umass, but that should stay since USB > floppy drives are still a thing. bms@ has given me USB floppy formatting code which I'd planned to merge into fdformat but considering the underlying devices are so very different it would be a difficult marriage. I'd be willing to support a ufdformat instead. > > Normally, I'd argue we might want to have a release where it's deprecated, > but it already was unusable in 11, and barely usable in 10 and has been a > shadow of its former self for much longer than that. The reason to keep some form of floppy support, eder fd or ufd is for the purpose of copying (dd) floppy media into image files for use with virtualbox or bhyve VMs. -- (One could say the same for CD and DVD drives. My new laptop at $JOB has no CD/DVD drive.) I digress. I think the ability to copy media to image files for VMs might be a reason to keep some form of support fd or ufd. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@cschubert.com> FreeBSD UNIX: <cy@FreeBSD.org> Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.
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