From owner-freebsd-scsi Fri May 17 16:06:15 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA27409 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Fri, 17 May 1996 16:06:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tfs.com (tfs.com [140.145.250.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA27403; Fri, 17 May 1996 16:06:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from critter.tfs.com by tfs.com (smail3.1.28.1) with SMTP id m0uKYaq-0003x4C; Fri, 17 May 96 16:05 PDT Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.tfs.com (8.7.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id XAA03061; Fri, 17 May 1996 23:05:37 GMT X-Authentication-Warning: critter.tfs.com: Host localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: salyzyn@inet.dpt.com cc: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Who wants a DPT SCSI controller driver? In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 17 May 1996 14:52:47 MST." <199605172152.OAA16143@orodruin.orthanc.com> Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 23:05:34 +0000 Message-ID: <3059.832374334@critter.tfs.com> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I'm forwarding this on Mark's behalf. If you would like to see FreeBSD > support for DPT's SCSI controllers, please let him know. Hi Mark, You can quote me on this one for your management. Why would DPT want a FreeBSD driver ? Well, I can think of two things, market and publicity. Market: Probably bigger than you might think. I have personally in the last 13 weeks (the age of my on-line mailarchive) told 14 different people "No, sorry, as nice as the DPTs look, we don't support them, sorry." and I'm generally know considered a HW wizard of any importance. Publicity: A lot of the people out there on the FreeBSD mailing lists do a lot more than FreeBSD. A lot of them have quite impressive power when it comes to hardware selection. "Hey, Danny, what do you think about FOORBAR controllers ?" "Don't know, never ran one" "Hmm what do you use then ?" "FROBOZZ. Never had a hitch" Notice, nothing bad was said about FOORBAR, but somebody else came out on top, because they had been burned in. A lot of people use the stuff on the FreeBSD lists as guidelines when they buy PCs for other uses. Often I hear people argument something along this line: "If FreeBSD can find HW problems where Windows 3.1 see none, and I select HW that work well with FreeBSD, is should have less trouble with my Windows." DPT is obviously seldom mentioned, and if it is it's the "sorry, but don't!" message you see. It would be a lot better for you to have the message be: "Works great." If you produce a driver that works well, with the price/performance and market-share DPT posess, I would expect that you will soon see the business case for writing the driver provide you with a healty return on the quite modest investment it would be. Poul-Henning Kamp, Speaking for himself, not for the FreeBSD core-team. PS: Send us an email on the core-team (core@freebsd.org) and let us find some way we can get the best out of this. We will probably be more than happy to distribute a binary version of the driver in our releases, if we can agree on the details. PPS: I personally have two DPT controllers at home, but one is living a boring life in a little used Windows machine and the other is simply lying unused on a shelf. Much to my irritation because I have a disk that would benefit from a decent controller... -- Poul-Henning Kamp | phk@FreeBSD.ORG FreeBSD Core-team. http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk Private mailbox. whois: [PHK] | phk@ref.tfs.com TRW Financial Systems, Inc. Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.