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Date:      Sat, 22 Jul 2000 19:44:10 -0400 (EDT)
From:      "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>
To:        "R. D. Davis" <rdd@smart.net>
Cc:        "Lawrence Cotnam Jr." <larry@pkunk.net>, Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@hutchtel.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Legacy Device Support (Was RE: No help...)
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007221934040.610-100000@sasami.jurai.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007221342490.26676-100000@smarty.smart.net>

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On Sat, 22 Jul 2000, R. D. Davis wrote:
> An Exabyte 8200, for example, is still in farly widespread use, and to
> drop support for it in 4.0 seems a little strange.  After all, it's
> not exactly ancient.

Weird.  My 8200 seems to work just fine under 5.0-CURRENT:

# dmesg | grep ^sa
sa0 at bt0 bus 0 target 6 lun 0
sa0: <EXABYTE EXB-8200 2543> Removable Sequential Access SCSI-CCS device 
sa0: 3.300MB/s transfers
# mt -f /dev/nrsa0 status
Mode      Density              Blocksize      bpi      Compression
Current:  default              variable       0        unsupported
---------available modes---------
0:        default              variable       0        unsupported
1:        default              variable       0        unsupported
2:        default              variable       0        unsupported
3:        default              variable       0        unsupported
---------------------------------
Current Driver State: at rest.
---------------------------------
File Number: 0  Record Number: 0
# tar -tvmf /dev/nrsa0 | more
drwxr-xr-x root/wheel        0 Jan  2 10:59 2000 vmh0/
-rw-r----- root/operator 2097120 Apr 12 23:44 2000 vmh0/quota.user
...

I don't think anyone has talked of dropping support for it.


> Devices like tape drives are not cheap...

If you're paying anything for 8200s then you're getting ripped off.

> people have investments in drives like the Exabytes, pefectly good
> hardware that's far from useless which still holds a reasonable amount
> of data and is fairly quick for home use.  Are we expected to purchase
> all new hardware everytime we upgrade? 

If you're not willing to take some responsibility for devices you depend
on, then yes, as this is a user supported OS.  If you lack clue then
you're expected to working on getting yours up to speed and failing that
providing incentive for capable developers to devote time and energy to
the hardware you wish to see supported, or if nothing else, pay some
contract FreeBSD support group to write the code you need.

> If so, it appeas that Microsoftitis may be infecting the brains of
> some people working on FreeBSD, alas.

If you're not pulling your own weight why should you be able to dictate
the size and shape of my yoke?  (Or anyone elses for that matter.)

-- 
| Matthew N. Dodd  | '78 Datsun 280Z | '75 Volvo 164E | FreeBSD/NetBSD  |
| winter@jurai.net |       2 x '84 Volvo 245DL        | ix86,sparc,pmax |
| http://www.jurai.net/~winter | This Space For Rent  | ISO8802.5 4ever |



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