Using nonstandard formats with a USB floppy drive?

Question

I was given a USB floppy drive, and it works beautifully. Linux Mint detects it as a Mitsumi FDD 061M, although the case and packaging are no-brand. (Counterfeit?) It realiably reads and writes 1.44MB floppies, no problem.

Now, the differences from a standard floppy on the motherboard controller: for Linux, the device that appears is /dev/sdb, not /dev/fd0. So I don't have all the other devices dedicated to other formats, like fd0u720, fd0u800, fd0u1720 and so on.

How could I try to read and write nonstandard disk images (like, say, 800 KB Atari ST image files) with this drive?

Answer 1

FDDs do not identify themselves to the operating system - they don't have a microprocessor which can identify the drive. So I suspect you have a case with a processor which interfaces the drive with the USB, and its that processor which identifies itself as Mitsumi.

This means that you are now dependent entirely on the software in the processor on whether it will do different formats. I'm not very optimistic about this: The fact that it installed as /dev/sdb/ suggests it is emulating a hard disk.

Try running lsusb -v, and post the section regarding the FDD. If the USB presents various interfaces, there's a chance you can change the configuration.