arwhite (06/04/82)
Does anybody out there know anything about this beastie? It apparently is now available on the 750. Apparently it doesn't go on either the unibus or a massbus but directl to the cpu. That means it sounds fast - faster than the RM80 on the massbus. Has anyone out there used one? Heard anything technical about it? (All I know is from sales reps who don't seem to know too much about it.) Is there a driver for it? Will there be complications writing one?
bcw (06/06/82)
From: Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University Re: RA80 disk drive I don't know the functional specs for this drive, but several people have asked how difficult it is to write a device driver for one. This subject came up at Decus in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago; it appears that there are quite a few complications. The drive is run by a little microprocessor which communicates with the cpu in a network-type protocol which is apparently rather complex (at least according to the DEC people there). It doesn't look anything like their other disks; I have no idea whether anybody has written a driver for unix. The I/O architecture for it sounds more like IBM channel-type disk drives than the old DEC disk drives, at least in that the controller actually has to be programmed rather than just stuffing some numbers into the controller registers. Please don't ask me to elaborate -- you now know as much about this device as I do. Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University