Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 10:47:43 -0500 (CDT) From: "M. L. Dodson" <bdodson@beowulf.utmb.edu> To: nathan@senate.org Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: QIC-80 Floppy Tapes Message-ID: <199706301547.KAA04755@beowulf.utmb.edu>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
You miss my point (although I should not have been so all encompassing with the "any unix" phrase). There is no, zip, nada, interest in the development team for working with these devices. There have been many pleadings for people to work on the driver (rewrite or import from another Unix). Nobody stepped forward. The main reason given was that these devices are all crap, and I concur with that assessment. This is neither inherently good or bad; it's just the way things are. YMMV, and you are free to disagree with this opinion. Bud Dodson PS (and others are welcome to comment on this point, as well, which I hope will not be construed in any way as being any flavor of a flame), As a relatively new (I think, correct me if I am wrong.) user of FreeBSD, you should be aware of the following "quirk" of our community (which _I_ do _not_ find at all confining): The interest levels of the active developers is a precious resource. Pleading for them to write in special support for old, outdated, or funkily designed hardware is not likely to get very far. By and large they don't view this as a very good use of their time. Most people come to realize that they have a good point when they think about it for awhile. We are not Linux and don't want to be. When we arrive at that conclusion, we just dump our old screwball hardware and get some good stuff. (Or give it to the wife to use on her wordprocessing Win95 box. Want my old QIC80 tape drive? You can have it if you pay the shipping cost.) If you can't generate interest, then you are on your own. Which is how most of the active developers got started in the first place, I believe. I sincerely wish you good luck on your floppy tape; you will need it. > > > Do yourself a favor and dump this floppy tape device. It won't work worth > > a damn on any unix. Any cheap, supported, (even PIO types) scsi controller > > Not true. Someone should port the Linux ftape driver to FreeBSD. It allows > 100% access to floppy tape drives via device files. > -- M. L. Dodson bdodson@scms.utmb.edu 409-772-2178 FAX: 409-772-1790
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199706301547.KAA04755>