Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 02:50:03 -0500 From: Bruce Vandiver <76350.1227@compuserve.com> To: tech_help_drivers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Replys to help for Future Domain Drivers Message-ID: <199801270251_MC2-30D0-1077@compuserve.com>
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Hey guys. Here is some of your feedback on my request. (Thanks for the replies.) Hope you will forgive the length. >The 1680 is a complete dog. Get a real SCSI card. >If you really want device support for this device, write the drivers >yourself. Nobody else seems to think that the time investment is worth it >for those cards. >From: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> You're a LOT of help..... >I don't know of anyone who even owns one of these cards anymore, so if >it's not you who does this then I honestly doubt that it will be >anyone at all and you might as well simply replace that card now. >From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> They ain't broke, so I am not replacing them. (I have 10 in use). >These cards are best sold to teenagers at rave parties, who will either >wear them as jewellery or use them to commit minor acts of mayhem on >innocent bystanders. > >To be brutally frank, the FreeBSD community is demonstrating a lot more >interest in hardware that is useful for contemporary workloads. >Witness the stable support for the Adaptec and NCR/Symbios adapters and >emerging support for hardware from people like Advansys and DPT in >contrast to the poor or nonexistent support for BOGUS hardware like >anything ever manufactured by Future Domain. >From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> You're no help either.... >If you'd like, I'll be more than happy to send you the tutorial I threw >together on starting to write device drivers. Unfortunately, this is how >device drivers get written. Someone with the device, and interest to have >it supported (read: You) lays their hands on the programming documentation, >does much trial and error learning the driver interface, and then writes >the driver. >From: "Brian J. McGovern" <mcgovern@spoon.beta.com> Thanks for a decent, reasonable response. Tell me more about the tutorial... >> Have a look at >> http://www.sbox.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rmike/freebsd/welcome.html which >> contains an 18c30 driver ported for the AHA2920. It also contains the >> original tmc18c30/ISA support which may well work with your cards. >>From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> > >Well I never. If anyone out there is using this driver, can we have >some feedback? If it works and appears to be maintained, we ought to >incorporate it... >From: Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk> Finally, some usable info! I will have to check this out.... Thanks! Actually, these cards work really well. I have 10 of them in 9 different machines. They are quite adequate for recording CDs in small batches. They are not the fastest SCSI adapters, but I have not had any failures or problems which would lead me to use the terms "BOGUS" or "COMPLETE DOGS". So if you haven't used the cards, what makes you guys say that?? FreeBSD supports the Future Domain TMC-950, which is an 8 bit ISA card, so why not the 1680, which is 16 bit ISA? It seems that Future Domain sold enough of these cards at reasonable prices to eat into Adaptec's profits, so Adaptec bought the company and shut it down. This procedure eliminated a lot of competition and allows Adaptec to keep their card prices unreasonably high. I think there must be 1000's of these cards still in use. You are not hearing from the people who have them because they aren't buying FreeBSD. (Why go and buy something which is NOT compatible with what you've got?) If I knew anything about programming in C, assembler, or Unix guts, I would have already written a driver. Since I don't, I thought I would take my problem to the Web and seek out expert assistance. Instead of help, some of you insult my equipment. I don't need that bullshit. I will check out www.sbox.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rmike/freebsd/welcome.html Can someone furnish a "howto" on incorporating the driver into FreeBSD? I do not have a manual to "RTFM" unless it is on the disk (2.1.7). P.S. I would be interested to hear more on Bob Bishop's comment about incorporating the existing 18c30/ISA driver referenced by Mike Smith. Best regards; Bruce Vandiver 76350.1227@compuserve.com
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