I just tried (for the 1st time) to read a floppy.  I got an error dialog:

Unable to enter file:/mnt/floppy (or /zip). You do not have access rights to 
this location.

That was when I clicked the desktop icon and also tried to view it via the 
file manager.

I also tried as root from the terminal (ls /mnt/floppy) and got Input/output 
error returned.

Mandrake 8

ls -l /mnt
drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jun 19 10:05 cdrom/
drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jun 19 10:05 cdrom2/
drwxrwxr-x    2 root     root         1024 Mar 27 03:08 disk/
drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jun 19 10:05 floppy/
drwxrwxrwx   28 root     root         4096 Dec 31  1969 win_c/
drwxrwxrwx   11 root     root         4096 Dec 31  1969 win_d/
drwxrwxrwx    4 root     root         4096 Dec 31  1969 win_e/
drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jun 19 10:05 zip/
[root

pete