Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 04:44:08 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Glenn Johnson" <gjohnson@srrc.ars.usda.gov> Cc: "Wayne Pascoe" <wayne.pascoe@realtime.co.uk>, "Aleksandar Simic'" <alex@frustum.clara.co.uk>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: The right way to burn CDs ? Message-ID: <004201c0b917$1cd3c1c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010328095550.A18291@node7.cluster.srrc.usda.gov>
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Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Glenn Johnson >Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 7:56 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: Glenn Johnson; Wayne Pascoe; Aleksandar Simic'; >freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: The right way to burn CDs ? > > >On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 11:36:25PM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > >> You may be somewhat interested in my story then: >> >> I'm an owner of a Phillips CDD2000 cd, this is the one that the >> class-action lawsuit was filed on. >> >> Well, I recieved a brand-new replacement Phillips CDROM drive in the >> mail a couple weeks ago, as a result of settling that class action. >> >> Only problem was - they sent an IDE burner, NOT a SCSI burner. The >> class-action was filed on the SCSI burners. Needless to say Phillips >> found a way to worm out of the settlement and screw the consumers >> again, since the IDE burners are of course cheaper than the SCSI ones. >> >> I figured that it took 4 years to get the bastards to make good on >> their crappy hardware and I wasn't going to wait another 4 years, >> besides that my wife's Winblows system works great with it and they at >> least did ship out Adaptec EasySleasy creator which reads ISO's. > >I am not exactly sure what your point is. Are you saying that the >Phillips IDE drive does not work under FreeBSD for burning CDs? > The point is that a SCSI burner is immensely more valuable to me than an IDE burner, and Phillips shafted me (and all the other consumers with this problem) by sending out an IDE burner. I don't know if the particular model or burner they sent works under FreeBSD because I didn't even try it. Sorry. However, I have a policy that I avoid use of IDE/ATAPI with FreeBSD whenever possible. I think that most serious FreeBSD users and developers have the same policy, although I think that a lot of people are bending when it comes to IDE disk drives, because the performance of a _single_ modern IDE disk and a _single_ modern SCSI disk in a FreeBSD system is pretty much identical. But, use of IDE for peripherals is still a no-mans land and while I'm happy to encourage others who choose to explore this territory, I'm not going to put any of my own money towards purchase of IDE peripherals other than disk drives for use in FreeBSD. I recognize, of course, that perpetuating this attitude basically guarentees that ATAPI development will always lag behind SCSI development on FreeBSD. But, my answer to that is if you don't like it, complain to the peripheral manufacturers and tell them you want them to price SCSI versions of their products the same as IDE versions. I guarentee that it doesen't cost a disk drive manufacturer more than a buck or two more to manufacture a disk drive with an IDE interface on it than a SCSI interface on it, it's criminal that they get away with charging 200% more for the devices. >I do not feel that there is anything wrong with my drive from a quality >or ATAPI spec implementation point of view. I know a lot of non-standard >hardware can be made to work under Windows with proprietary drivers >so I would never use the "it works with Windows" argument to make my >point. My point was that my drive and others work under Linux with >open-source software and should be able to work under FreeBSD as well. >Unfortunately, I do not have the requisite skill to fix the problem so I >boot into a Linux system when I need to burn a CD. It is inconvenient >but gets the job done. I only hope that the people who do have the >skill to fix the problem realize that it is a software problem and not a >hardware problem. > You know something, you are absolutely right, however there is one problem - the ATAPI spec isn't coded into stone. It's close, but there's enough variation that your drive can be perfectly compliant with the standard, and some other drive can be perfectly compliant with the standard, and yet the other drive can work and yours can't. Unfortunately, when writing a software driver, close isn't good enough. The device driver needs to be exactly tailored to a specific implementation of the standard. If the standard is exactly specified, it's easy. If the standard is sloppy, then you do the best that you can, but in actuality you end up having to test with every piece of hardware known to God and anyone to guarentee compliance. If you really want the problem fixed and you can't fix it yourself, then I have a suggestion for you. Contact the ATAPI developers in FreeBSD and offer to _donate_ a CD burner of the same model as yours to them. >In my opinion, the FreeBSD project can not claim support for ATAPI >CDR-RW drives in general. There could be a list of supported drives but >to my knowledge this does not exist. > No, they can because the ATAPI spec has been modified over the years and is still not exact, and all devices claiming ATAPI compliance don't adhere to exactly the same implementation of the ATAPI standard. SCSI-2 is much tigher as a standard which is why you don't see these problems as much, besides it also uncouples the host BIOS from the peripheral, which removes another point of potential incompatability. >-- >Glenn Johnson > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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