Re: PROBLEM: floppy motor spins when floppy module not installed

[John Bradford]

Quote from "Richard B. Johnson" <root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] M=E5ns Rullg=E5rd wrote:
> 
> > Dale Mellor <dale@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 priorit=
> y
> > 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.
> >
> > --
> > M=E5ns Rullg=E5rd
> > mru@xxxxxx
> 
> 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.

We discussed almost exactly the same problem at length on LKML just
two months ago:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=106545766213063&w=2

John.
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