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Date:      Thu, 19 Dec 1996 20:52:16 +1100
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        babbleon@mercury.interpath.com, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Zip II: the disktab entry
Message-ID:  <199612190952.UAA05565@godzilla.zeta.org.au>

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>Ok, cool.  Thanks to a couple of fine folks on this list, I now have
>my zip drive working w/r/t msdos mounting and raw device usage.  Now,
>I'd like to create "real" filesystems on Zip drives, but I don't have
>a disktab entry for it.

It doesn't need a disktab entry.  Treat it as an array of sectors.

>PS:  It's slow as a dog, or so it seems to me, and, worse yet, it seems
>to make my system really sluggish.  Has anybody spent time tuning it? 
>I'm on a 486Dx4-100 with a fast parallel port, so I'd expect my system
>to pretty much be able to keep up if the Zip drive can.

Slowness is probably normal for the parallel port version.  I used the
SCSI version for root and swap on a 486DX2/66 with nfs-mounted /usr
for a few months.  It was about the same speed as nfs.

>PPS: I'm unclear on the distinction between /dev/rsd0 and /dev/rsd0c
>(or /dev/rfd0 vs. /dev/rfd0c for that matter).  I use the former as
>a rule but much of the doc favors the latter.  Can anybody clue me in?

/dev/rsd0 is the whole disk.  /dev/rsd0c is the `c' partition on the
first BSD slice on the disk if the disk happens to have a BSD slice
on it.  If the first BSD slice happens to cover the whole disk and
the `c' partition on it covers the whole slice, then /dev/rsd0 and
/dev/rsd0c describe the same region of the disk, otherwise not.  They
are logically distinct in all cases.  E.g., you can write a label to
/dev/rsd0c (if it exists) but the label on /dev/rsd0 is read-only.

Bruce



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