Compaq PCMCIA floppy driver on an IBM thinkpad (kernel 2.6.14)

[Daniel Vianna]

I have a PCMCIA external floppy driver (Compaq FDCard Ver. 1.01, from an 
old 486SX Compaq Contura Aero notebook), and I want to use it in my IBM 
Thinkpad T-20. I have enabled floppy driver, PCMCIA and Yenta support in 
the kernel as modules. lsmod gives me pcmcia_core, pcmcia, yenta_socket, 
rsrc_nonstatic, firmware_class and floppy. I have installed the 
pcmciautils-012 package, 'Pccardctrl info' recognizes the driver, and 
dmesg gives us

   Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
   FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306

but when I try to mount it, it doesn't light up. dmesg gives me

   end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
   FAT: unable to read boot sector

and mount returns

   mount: block device /dev/fd0 is write-protected; mounting read-only
   mount: /dev/fd0: can't read superblock

I'm sure it did not try to read anything. It lights up and functions 
when I boot / plug it, but not when I ask it to mount.

Google finds me some documentation that suggests that it won't work with 
other computer than the Compaq Contura Aero itself (because it depends 
on its BIOS). I'm just not sure if it's the latest information. Ideas?

Cheers, Daniel.