Your suggestion was exactly what I needed. after adding "floppy" to
/etc/modules, My Floppy drive reappeared in Nautilus just as it had
previously. I was able to mount and read floppies just as I should,
however I still can't format a disc.

I have been advised that I should 'right-click' the icon on the
desktop and select "format" but that is not an available choice,
neither in active or grayed form.

I have not been able to sort out the correct commands for "fdformat"
and although "Synaptic" tells me that "gnome-utils" is installed, I
can't execute it nor can I find any information neither in "man" nor
using 'on-line help'.

I am beginning to believe that my installation is crippled in some way.

Again thanks to Joe, and thanks too to those of you who suggested
things which I had already tried, and thanks even to those of you who
suggested I should just give up, a practical alternative to some, but
just withdrawing support for some hardware or software that people are
productively using is just "so Microsoft".