Hmmm, "ide-floppy"? That's not what you think it is. That's for Zip drives, SuperDisk, and Iomega Clik!/PocketZip cards. Did you recompile your kernel and leave out floppy support? Or did you compile it as a module and not load the module (don't even know if you *can* compile the floppy as a module, have to check). If you did happen to compile it as a module, maybe the module isn't loaded. Search under your /lib/modules directory tree to see if there is an "fd" module. If you try and boot a disk from floppy does it boot? If not, then your cable must not be connected, or you have disabled the floppy in the BIOS, or the floppy drive is bad. If it "will" boot a disk (any disk) then it definately is a kernel issue. I can do a little more research for you if you can answer those questions.
P.S. If it's compiled as a module then it should show up in the /lib/modules/<kernelversion>/kernel/drivers/block directory
P.S.S. And if you do an "/sbin/lsmod" do you show that ide-floppy module loaded? I wonder if this could be conflicting with the *real* floppy driver?
P.S.S.S. There is some information in the kernel source tree as to floppy driver params that you can pass to the kernel at boot time in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/floppy.txt
P.s.s.s.s. Check in your /var/log/messages file after a reboot and find where the entries start for the boot process. In my log right after the Hard Drives are detected (Partition Check) I get:
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Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
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Immediatly following that I get the "ide-floppy driver 0.97.sv" line like yours. So it should be detected immediately prior to that ide-floppy line. Do you get an error or is it just plain missing? If it's missing it sure sounds like the floppy driver is either not compiled in to the kernel or is not compatable with your floppy controller. If this sounds like the case and you are sure the floppy driver is compiled into the kernel then is there any way you can find out what floppy controller you have (what motherboard and chipset?).
[ March 11, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]