> fd0c: hard error reading fsbn 0 (st0 40<abnrml> st1 1<no_am> st2 0 cyl 0
   > head 0 sec 1)
   > [...]
   > Does this mean my drive is dead or what? According to the previous owner the
   > drive was working fine a month ago, so maybe it got damaged in shipping.
   
   This error has been reported before; it is almost certainly caused
   by an error in the driver, but I've no idea exactly which of the
   errors it is..


i'm not so sure it is the driver.  i've had this problem occur to me 90%
of the time when the floppy itself was bad.  i couldn't use it anywhere,
even though in some cases i had been using floppies elsewhere right upto
the moment this error first occured.  the other 10% of the time, another
drive seems to still be able to read the floppy, but often this is just
another sparc, not a pc, etc..


floppy's are bad, m'kay?