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Date:      Wed, 6 Mar 1996 21:08:30 -0800 (PST)
From:      Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Should we get ATAPI from NetBSD? 
Message-ID:  <Pine.AUX.3.91.960306205931.23474A-100000@covina.lightside.com>
In-Reply-To: <18201.826173368@time.cdrom.com>

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On Wed, 6 Mar 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> Well, shortly after this, Serge Vakulenko returned from the dead as it
> were and said that he'd be happy to continue developing the ATAPI
> code.  He also requested 2 more IDE CDROM drive models for testing,
> and I'm currently trying to get these purchased and sent on to him.
> 
> He also indicated that the NetBSD driver wasn't quite the equal of his
> in that it didn't support audio.  This seems a reasonable point, and
> I'm willing to give him his shot if he's willing to come back and
> develop the driver some more.

Well, that's good!  I see three main problems with the ATAPI driver as it 
stands:

1) Doesn't work with some models.  Not Serge's fault, there are just too 
many almost-ATAPI-compatible variants and combinations of cases (hard 
drive as master, CD-ROM as slave, CD-ROM as master on secondary 
controller, CD-ROM as slave on secondary controller, etc..).  Getting 
the driver tested on more drives should increase its reliability in 
handling unusual circumstances, especially where probing is concerned.

2) Doesn't work on boot floppy.  I find it odd that my CD-ROM is 
perfectly probed when I use my own custom kernel, but not when I boot 
from "boot.flp" or "atapi.flp".  I don't understand how the probing 
routines can fail simply because of the presence of other drivers, or the 
fact that the kernel has been loaded from a floppy image.  I can work 
with Serge on getting this problem solved, and I will also try the latest 
3/3 snap to see what happens...

3) Doesn't work with Workman CD audio player.  Apparently the IOCTLs in
the FreeBSD port only work with the SCSI CD-ROM driver.  At any rate, I
get "length read errors" when I tried it with ATAPI (and I don't think it
works with the proprietary controllers either).  Ideally, every CD-ROM
driver (ATAPI, SCSI, and proprietary) would conform to the same set of
IOCTLs, except for CD-DA (downloading the raw digital audio from a music
CD), which is only supported by some SCSI drives.

---Jake



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