From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 25 15:55:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA18387 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:55:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA18382 for ; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:55:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id PAA04271; Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:51:21 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199704252251.PAA04271@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Maintainer of ft/lft To: joed@ksu.edu Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:51:21 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199704252224.RAA07050@abc> from "joed@ksu.edu" at Apr 25, 97 05:24:32 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > As I mentioned in my last email the code becomes harder if you use > a QIC-80 rev a or b (possibly c, not sure anymore), as those drives don't > provide the method of detecting tape geometry (There wasn't a need then). As long as I can standardly tell the difference between a QIC-40/80 and a QIC-117, I'll be happy. > Writing a driver to handle todays standards should be easy, but you'll > need some hooks to handle the old drives that aren't up to standard. But they are all up to the older standards, right? So as long as the driver maps the standard space, there will be no problem, right? They are, after all, *standard*, as my detractors have claimed... > In the ft0 driver the original author made a comment while working on > establishing the tape geometry that his colorado jumbo 250 didn't > work with the nicer commands. As much as it would be nice to forget the old > tapes, I'm guessing there are a lot of jumbo 250s running around. It > would be nice if our ft0 could handle those. Point me at the docs... 8-). > All QIC standards are freely available at the request, with no non-disclosure > agreements required. It is a fairly open standard. Well, I got the QIC-40/80 stuff back when they were first coming out and there was a call for driver authors. I'll dig out my old stuff and get them to send the new stuff. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.