Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 16:25:35 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, Ray Black <allah@mercury.webserve.net>, Stefan Esser <se@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: NCR 53c710 Fast-SCSI-2 controller (was: Hardware Support) Message-ID: <19980524162535.A419@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980523233233.9142P-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu>; from Doug White on Sat, May 23, 1998 at 11:35:36PM -0700 References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980520191548.13863A-100000@mercury.webserve.net> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980523233233.9142P-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu>
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On Sat, 23 May 1998 at 23:35:36 -0700, Doug White wrote: > On Wed, 20 May 1998, Ray Black wrote: > >> I've got one of the dread Compaq Prosignia VS servers with the unsupported >> NCR 53c710 Fast-SCSI-2 controller integrated with the EISA bus. Why >> is this board not supported? I mean, it's not as though it were an >> extremely rare computer, so what are the hardware problems that cause no >> one in the BSD (or even the Linux) community to support it? > > My guesses are as follows: > . Those who are capable of programming for this card don't have a card > handy to hack with. > . Until recently Compaq products were lameducks because their Ethernet > cards weren't supported either. Now that there is a driver for their > NICs it may spur someone to undertake a development effor. For some reason, Compaq have gained a reputation for marginally compatible hardware. I can't comment, but I know it has caused people a lot of trouble in the past. >> I'm far from a great programmer, but if someone would point me to >> info on how to write device drivers, I'd do what I could to make >> that sucker work. Talk to Stefan Eßer, who is responsible for the NCR driver. He'll probably be interested if you can help with the testing. I've copied him on this message. >> Also, on a silimar note, it would seem like something that could be ported >> over from SCO fairly easily (and I'm no trademark or copyright lawyer, so >> I don't know the ramifications of that), yet it's not been done. What >> would be the limitations of that move, beyond the legal ones? > > SCO is *completely* different from FreeBSD. Porting from SCO (esp. device > drivers) isn't as easy as it looks. SCO is SVR4 based while we are 4.4BSD > based -- it's the difference between Chevy and BMW. You don't say which is which :-) In fact, SCO is based on SVR3, not SVR4. There are large differences in the device driver structures. It's really not that simple, and it would be far easier to modify the existing driver. Of course, if you have the SCO source, it would be very interesting to compare the two. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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