From owner-freebsd-hackers  Thu Aug 20 04:53:20 1998
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From: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Message-Id: <199808201007.MAA26846@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Subject: Re: TMC-950 scsi card
To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith)
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 12:07:20 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <199808192151.VAA00392@dingo.cdrom.com> from "Mike Smith" at Aug 19, 98 09:51:27 pm
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> The Advansys cards are supported under CAM.  There will eventually be 
> CAM support for the Adaptec aic 6x60 chips as well it seems.
> 
> However the grief level involved in writing support for these 
> underpowered devices is so high, and the return on investment so low, 
> that they truly are a false economy.

The only thing i can agree upon is that it would not make much
sense to *pay* someone to develop a driver for such low end hardware. 
But other than that: 

 * as a user, having a wider choice is always a good thing not to
   mention that many times such cheap cards are available more or
   less for free.
 * from the FreeBSD point of view, having more cards supported means
   more "satisfied users" and thus it is better for the project.

and finally, as a developer (as opposed as a simple user) i am a
bit uncomfortable in talking about economical issues... just consider
the time and money i (as many many others) have invested in the
project both for developing stuff and supporting it...

> > for driving a low throughput device e.g. a scanner i'd rather not have
> > to use a 2940 as i am doing now...
> 
> Why?  Plenty of leftover bandwidth for other devices.

scanners tend not to release the bus between request and response,
so you will not be safe in putting other peripherals (e.g. disks,
CD writers, etc) on the same bus unless you can tolerate other I/O
to get stuck while the scan proceeds.

	cheers
	luigi

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