port-sparc/45306: Formatting a floppy doesn't work on SparcStation 2 under NetBSD 5.1

[Georg.Brein%unibas.ch@localhost]

>Number:         45306
>Category:       port-sparc
>Synopsis:       Formatting a floppy doesn't work on SparcStation 2 under 
>NetBSD 5.1
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    port-sparc-maintainer
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Aug 29 11:55:00 +0000 2011
>Originator:     Georg Brein
>Release:        NetBSD 5.1 sparc
>Organization:
University of Basel/Switzerland
>Environment:
NetBSD se-zulu.psycho.unibas.ch 5.1 NetBSD 5.1 (GENERIC) #0: Sat Nov  6 
18:44:40 UTC 2010  
builds%b6.netbsd.org@localhost:/home/builds/ab/netbsd-5-1-RELEASE/sparc/201011061943Z-obj/home/builds/ab/netbsd-5-1-RELEASE/src/sys/arch/sparc/compile/GENERIC
 sparc

The SparcStation 2 has firmware revision 2.9 (AFAIK the latest and greatest).
>Description:
Formatting a floppy disk on the internal FD drive of a SparcStation 2
produces verify errors and the resulting disk is unusable unless reformatted on 
another system:

root@se-zulu:~ # fdformat           
Ready to format /dev/rfd0a with 80 cylinders, 2 tracks, 18 sectors of 512 bytes
(1440 KB) Yes/no [y]?y
Formatting track 0 / head 0 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 0 / head 1 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 1 / head 0 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 1 / head 1 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 2 / head 0 - VERIFY ERROR
<one line per track>
Formatting track 78 / head 0 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 78 / head 1 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 79 / head 0 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting track 79 / head 1 - VERIFY ERROR
Formatting 160 tracks total complete.
fdformat: 160 track formatting errors

Turning off verification (fdformat -n) suppresses the error messages, but the 
resulting floppies equally exhibit read and write errors around (but not always 
on) block 14 while trying to write or read using dd on the raw device and a 
block size of 512 bytes.

The floppy in question is physically o.k. (tested on a Linux box) and all other 
floppies meet the same difficulties. Formatting and using the same floppies on 
the same hardware under Solaris (2.5.1) works flawlessly, so a hardware error 
is unlikely, either.

Using floppies formatted on another system poses no problem; the difficulties 
are limited to the formatting process.
>How-To-Repeat:
Boot generic kernel on SparcStation 2; put floppy disk (1440 KB) into floppy 
drive; execute "fdformat".
>Fix:
Only a workaround: format your floppies on another computer :-)