3.5 inch Floppy Disk
Drive
SUN workstations have 3.5 inch floppy drives that give users
direct access to their disks from their wam accounts without
having to use ftp. These floppy drives support 1.44 megabyte
(HD), 1.2 megabyte (MD) and 720K (DS/DD) disk formats
(determined by the presence or absence of holes in the disk
case). There are several things you should be aware and
commands that you should be familiar with when working with
the floppy drive. Since the SUN is a Unix based system, it
views floppy disks in a Unix way.
Mounting A
Diskette
Any diskette inserted into the floppy drive is treated as
another file system. Similar to an AFS volume, a disk must be
"mounted" before it can be recognized by the system. With the
Solaris 2 operating system, a disk is automatically mounted
as part of the directory tree and will become available as a
directory under the directory "/floppy". It has been our
experience that the disk may not be automatically recognized
when it is inserted into the floppy drive. If this occurs, it
is up to you to mount the disk yourself. To mount a disk,
insert it into the drive, open a console window and at the
command prompt, type:
/usr/bin/volcheck
After the command executes, there should be a directory
corresponding to the disk's title in "/floppy". You may then
treat the disk as you treat any Unix directory.
Ejecting A
Diskette From The Drive
Ejecting a disk on the SUN can be done in a variety of ways.
There is a way to eject a disk that will almost always work.
Assuming a disk is in the drive and you wish to eject that
disk, open a console window and at the command prompt, type:
eject floppy
Upon execution of this command, the motorized eject mechanism
of the drive should eject the disk, whether it has been
mounted or not. If, upon execution of the eject command you
receive this message:
/vol/dev/rdiskette0/blank: Device busy
or something which looks similar, you are probably residing
in the current directory for that disk and thus, the machine
believes you are using it. Change to a different directory
before executing the eject command.
Using DOS
Diskettes In A SUN workstation
The SUN workstation is fully compatible with IBM MS-DOS 720K
and 1.44 megabyte disk formats and will treat any files or
disks in this format in the same way it treats a disk
formatted on the SUN. The SUN is not compatible with the
Macintosh 1.4 megabyte format. It will accept a Macintosh
diskette to the drive, but will not mount it. Any attempts to
write to the "/floppy" directory will result in a permission
denied error.
What
To Do If Your Removable Media is not Removable
If you encounter a workstation with a disk in its drive and
removing it by one of the above methods does not work, please
contact the Office of Information Technology (OIT)
Help Desk
for assistance.
CD-ROM Drive
The SUN workstations that are in the labs are equipped
with a CD-ROM drive along with the floppy drive. The CD-ROM
does not use a caddy similar to that of the Macintosh, but
instead ejects a tray onto which you may insert a CD. The
tray is made of plastic, not steel, so be careful not to
press down on the tray or lean on it in any way when
inserting a CD. This may damage the tray. The CD-ROM drive
operates and is treated almost the same as the floppy drive
with a few exceptions that you need to be aware of.
Mounting A
CD-ROM
As opposed to mounting a floppy disk automatically, the SUN
seems to have no problem automatically mounting a CD-ROM. If
by chance it does not mount a CD automatically, you may do so
with the same command to mount a floppy disk drive (above):
/usr/bin/volcheck
Note: It is not necessary to run volcheck for audio
CD's.
Ejecting A CD-ROM
From A Drive
Ejecting A CD-ROM becomes somewhat easier than ejecting a
floppy disk. You shouldn't have to issue the same eject
command (as done for the floppy disk) as the SUN provides a
button on the drive which activates the eject mechanism. This
button is located in the upper right hand corner of the
CD-ROM drive. The CD-ROM drive is located on the right hand
side of the machine. If by chance this button is inoperable,
you may also eject the CD-ROM by using the command:
eject cdrom
Upon an attempt to eject a CD, you may receive the message:
/vol/dev/rcdrom0/xxxx: Device busy
in which case you are probably using the CD-ROM or residing
in the directory "/cdrom". Change to a different directory
and try re-issuing the command.
What To Do If Your
Removable Media Isn't Removable
If you an encounter problems ejecting the CD from the CD-ROM
drive, there is most likely a problem with the internal
mechanism of the drive. Please contact the OIT Help Desk
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