From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Dec 3 15:29:14 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id PAA03920 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 3 Dec 1995 15:29:14 -0800 Received: from gandalf.me.ksu.edu (joed@gandalf.me.ksu.edu [129.130.41.86]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id PAA03913 for ; Sun, 3 Dec 1995 15:29:02 -0800 Received: (from joed@localhost) by gandalf.me.ksu.edu (8.6.10/8.6.9) id RAA26917; Sun, 3 Dec 1995 17:25:06 -0600 From: Joe Diehl Message-Id: <199512032325.RAA26917@gandalf.me.ksu.edu> Subject: Re: ft (Qic 40/80) To: trangmar@gnsnet.com (Robert Trangmar) Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 17:25:06 -0600 (CST) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Reply-To: joed@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Robert Trangmar" at Dec 2, 95 00:59:15 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2309 Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk As Robert Trangmar wrote: > > > Does anyone know why this this wasn't written as a *complete* tape driver? > It would be really useful for me to have this as a device i could use > dump and tar on and i am considering looking further into it with a view > to enhancing it to do just that. > Just thought i'd cast around to see if anyone had any input before i > expended/wasted valuable time. > > Thanks in advance, > > RobT > In about two weeks (end of the semester), I will be starting a complete rewrite of the ft driver in order to accomplish the following tasks: o Make the ft driver one driver fully compatible with the SCSI tape driver (unless absolutely impossible), and therefore other programs, such as mt. o Update support to add Wide, and Travan tapes... Essentially bringing the driver up to date with the current revisions of QIC-40 / QIC-80 / QIC-3010 / QIC-3020. o Complete new structure Please note that the initial release of the driver will require compliance with QIC-117 Rev. C or higher. It is unknown which drives will be effected by this; however, I know that some Colorado Jumbo 250 tapes will not work, initially. I hope to allow the driver to work with all drivers (QIC-117 Rev. A or higher) before any major release of the driver. Also note that my only FreeBSD machine is a production box, so I am currently running FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE... Perhaps the driver will simply snap into place in -current, or maybe it will require some updating. Just be aware of this matter. I am also looking for potential testers for pre-release versions of the driver. Again, I am running 2.1R, so it may be beneficial to be running the same version of the o/s (although it would be interesting to see how well the driver works under -stable or -current. If you are interested, please send or name, e-mail address, version of FreeBSD, and type of tape drive to joed@freebsd.org. BTW- I will probably be losing my current Internet access, so the bellow listed address may become invalid without notice. Please use my address on Freefall for any mail (joed@freebsd.org). At the very least, I will be able to open a telnet session to freefall to check e-mail. --- Joe Diehl Engineering Computing Center Kansas State University