1. The question is how do I make a USB floppy function like an internal floppy in Linux?

The USB floppy works great in Linux. However in Gnome when I go to use the floppy formater it points to /dev/fda, which is no longer hooked up. My USB floppy is \dev\sda and I can use from the command line just fine, but I am too much a fan of the GUI to use the command line.

I tried to install RedHat with the USB floppy, /dev/sda, and not the internal floppy, but when it came time to create the boot disk during the install it was looking for /dev/hda and I was left without a boot-disk, and an unbootable Linux system with Lilo installed on a Linux partition instead of the MBR.

2. How do you remove hardware such as a floppy drive from Linux?

Here are my installation steps:

After installing Win98 & XP Pro without a floppy drive, I shutdown my machine and connected an internal floppy drive.

The reason I did this is because I was installing Red Hat Linux 9 and needed to boot from a floppy once the install was complete and copy my bootsect.lnx to my C:\ drive.

After I copy the bootsect.lnx to a floppy disk in Linux, I shutdown my machine and disconnected the internal floppy.

I booted into XP, connected a Sony USB floppy disk and copied the bootsect.lnx to the root of my C:\ drive and modified the XP boot loader for Linux.

The USB floppy works great in Linux. However in Gnome when I go to use the floppy formatter it points to /dev/fda, which is no longer hooked up. My USB floppy is \dev\sda and I can use from the command line just fine, but I am too much a fan of the GUI to use the command line.

In case you are wondering why I just don't use an internal floppy drive, it is because there is no more room left in my Shuttle SS51G. An internal Zip-drive took the floppy's place.