[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux boot floppy -- making it without windows or dos

[Peter A. Koren]

>  I think your suppositions are flawed.  I've had little or no trouble
> with dd or rawrite either one as long as floppys were good.  I don't
> think one is any better than the other.  Not much difference as far as
> I can tell, they both work just fine as long as media and hardware is
> ok.

I have always used only new or freshly formatted floppies using Windows
formatting, whether I used rawrite or dd to copy the boot image to the
floppy. When dd failed I reformatted again under windows -- the same
floppy -- and rawrite would succeed. That is somewhat of a controlled
experiment. It was also repeated a number of times. I can only guess
that some interaction between a drive that was gradually failing and the
two different device drivers being used -- Windows vs. Linux -- caused
one method to fail but not the other. The working of rawrite fooled me
into thinking the drive was OK. It was not.

But I am now relieved that my problem has been solved. Back to Linux
goodness.

--Pete