From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Nov 22 16:26:18 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id QAA29518
          for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:26:18 -0800 (PST)
Received: from itchy.atlas.com ([206.29.170.232])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA29508;
          Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:26:12 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from brantk@localhost) by itchy.atlas.com (8.8.0/8.8.0) id QAA10927; Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:24:31 -0800 (PST)
From: Brant Katkansky <brantk@atlas.com>
Message-Id: <199611230024.QAA10927@itchy.atlas.com>
Subject: Re: ATAPI (was: Who needs Perl? We do!)
To: mark@quickweb.com (Mark Mayo)
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:24:31 -0800 (PST)
Cc: terry@lambert.org, sos@FreeBSD.ORG, p.richards@elsevier.co.uk,
        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Reply-To: brantk@atlas.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.94.961122182400.24652A-100000@vinyl.quickweb.com> from Mark Mayo at "Nov 22, 96 06:30:00 pm"
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> I hate IDE/ATAPI and wouldn't run it on my machine if dealers GAVE me the
> crap. And I certainly would never _build_ a machine for FreeBSD with IDE,
> but that's irrelevent. You're living in make believe world if you think
> the average PC user who might be interested in running FreeBSD will have a
> full SCSI box...
> 
> We NEED better IDE/ATAPI support. I dont' have a big enough brain to write
> this stuff myself, but I will conribute whatever I can to help the cause.

"Me, too."

I must admit, I do have one machine that has a pair of IDE disks in it,
but I really don't care how fast it runs.

However, it _is_ important to note that _considerably_more_ than 90% of 
the hardware that's selling is not SCSI.  Very few mainstream vendors
will sell you SCSI unless you specifically ask for it, if even then.

CDROM issues aside, our general level of IDE support is not good - I
think we all are aware of that.  Linux outperforms us in this regard,
and I suspect that we lose a lot of users based on this metric.

If we (meaning the FreeBSD community) care about including these people 
in our user base then it behooves us to do something about it.

The question is, do we care?

I personally do not have the skills needed to take on this project, but
I'm willing to help.

-- Brant Katkansky (brantk@atlas.com)
   Software Engineer, ADC