if i were you i would not just let the drive sit there not working. even if you dont use it, it should be working and there is no reason for it not to. how are you trying to mount the floppy drive? maybe there is erronous input you are providing, try just putting a disk in the drive, and run kde and open the floppy that way, click on the floppy icon that is put by default on the desktop. when you said this:

" If I access it from a terminal window, the error I get is: first that the floppy is read only, and then it tries to mount the disk read only, but gives an error message that says there were in/out errors, and returns me to the prompt."

do you check to see if it is mounted? when i mount a floppy often is the case that i view input/output errors, but thefloppy drive IS in fact mounted. try again, and then cd to whatever place the floppy is mounted.