gaw@mercury.acc.com (12/11/90)
I am trying to gather information concerning SCSI device drivers for SUN OS. The standard manual that comes with SUN OS, "Writing Device Drivers" does not provide any in depth information into the interface to the SCSI bus. It does reference two documents, "SCSI Implementation Guide" and "SCSA: SUN Common SCSI Architecture". Has anyone out there written a device driver for a device on the SCSI bus and if so could they tell me if these manuals are worth obtaining? Secondly are there any gotchas that are not documented anywhere? How compatible is the SUN SCSI bus with that of other vendors, hardware and software wise? Any other information on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Glen A. Warholic gaw@mercury.acc.com Advanced Computer Communications
hue@island.uu.net (Colonel Panic) (12/19/90)
In article <753@brchh104.bnr.ca>, gaw@mercury.acc.com writes: > I am trying to gather information concerning SCSI device drivers for SUN > OS. The standard manual that comes with SUN OS, "Writing Device Drivers" > does not provide any in depth information into the interface to the SCSI > bus. It does reference two documents, "SCSI Implementation Guide" and > "SCSA: SUN Common SCSI Architecture". Has anyone out there written a > device driver for a device on the SCSI bus and if so could they tell me if > these manuals are worth obtaining? Secondly are there any gotchas that > are not documented anywhere? How compatible is the SUN SCSI bus with that Yes, you must get both of these. Sun did the logical thing which is to make the host adapter code separate from the device driver. This way you don't have to deal with managing the SCSI bus and can concentrate on writing your driver. The SCSA document describes the functions in the SCSA library, the implementation guide describes other kernel support functions and has an example driver. The example sucks because it doesn't drive a real device, and assumes you know all about non-SCSA device drivers (all they provide is xxslave(), xxattach(), and xxstratgegy()), but they do have some useful code fragments to show how you might handle errors and retrys. Also, I am interested in starting a mailing list for people developing device drivers that use SCSA. I am not aware of one that already exists, so if you are interested, send mail to me and I will set up a mailing list. I expect the names to be scsa-request@island.com for admin stuff, and scsa@island.com for the actual mailing list, but it's not set up yet. Jonathan Hue Island Graphics Corp. uunet!island!hue hue@island.com