Diskette Drives

If the workstation you are using has an internal diskette drive, it is referred to in Windows as drive A:.

If you are running Solaris Volume Manager (vold) on your workstation, you will need to disable Volume Manager's control of the floppy drive before the floppy will function under SunPCi. The script vold_floppy_disable, located in the /opt/SUNWspci/bin directory, disables vold control of the floppy. To use the script, run it before you start up SunPCi. Otherwise, you will not be able to use the floppy drive as drive A:.

Most workstations come with one diskette drive; however, there are some SPARCstation systems that do not have a built-in diskette drive. If you have a SPARCstation system that does not have a built-in diskette drive, you will need to have one installed if you intend to install software or copy data from diskette.

Ejecting Diskettes

To eject the diskette from the drive, first use the following command in a UNIX window:

% eject floppy

The system returns the following message:

/dev/rdiskette can now be manually ejected

Press the manual eject button on your workstation's floppy drive to eject the diskette.

Using Low-Density Diskettes

Since Windows NT does not use DOS, you will not be able to perform this procedure on a Windows NT system.

Under the SunPCi program, just as on a PC, low-density diskettes must be formatted, read, or written as low-density diskettes. To format low-density diskettes, you must explicitly specify the diskette parameters while formatting.

To format a low-density DOS diskette, perform the following step:

1. At the DOS prompt, enter the DOS format command with /t and /n options.

   For example, enter the following command at the DOS prompt:

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   C:\> format a: /t:80 /n:9
   

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   For more information about the format command, enter HELP FORMAT at the DOS prompt.