a186@mindlink.UUCP (Harvey Taylor) (09/28/90)
In Msg <1990Sep21.155844.14511@agora.uucp>,billsey@agora.uucp (Bill Seymour) writes: |In article <92650@srcsip.UUCP> carpent@SRC.Honeywell.COM |Todd Carpenter) writes: |: [..] |:So, that brings on a serious question: Has anyone managed to get |:the A2090a patched up so it can be used with a SCSI tape? I would |:be willing to pay for it, even! (I know, I could *pay* for a new |:controller, too. But I only have 1 SCSI drive, and 4 ST506. Another |:SCSI controller doesn't do me a whole lot of good, especially since |:I could hook up another 5 to this one, plus the tape drive.) |: | I'm really suprised someone hasn't reverse engineered the |2090/2090a device driver to fix all the incompatibilities with |current standards. It sure seems like it'd be a good product. Charge |$19.95 each and sell one to everyone who has one of those |controllers. | It's a good idea. I've thought of it, so I'm sure others have. It's also fairly difficult, IMHO. And I'm an inveterate disassembler. Have you looked at that code? There are some strange things going on therein. Have you noticed that the driver gets loaded to an expansion slot range,$E80000+ (depending on your cards I guess). Then there are the private fields in the IO.Struct. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's a project that gets intermittent attention. Has anybody ever tried to get the source code from CBM, to do it properly? (Seeing as it seems CBM isn't going to do it.) <-Harvey "You know things have rather jumped the groove when potential suspects must explain to law enforcers the nature of their alleged perpetrations." -JP Barlow (on the NuPrometheus caper) Harvey Taylor Meta Media Productions uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Harvey_Taylor a186@mindlink.UUCP
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (10/01/90)
In <271@rusux1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de>, wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) writes: >Someone here in Germany has done this. His driver is available as >chip set for the 2090a and on a socalled turbo autoboot board for the >poor 2090 owners (price for the latter DM 169 (these days 1$ := ~1.55DM)). >He wrote this driver because of some 'features' of the SCSI part of >hddisk.device. As a side effect the ST506 part was speed up ( <= 50% , >384K/sec disk dependant ). The 2090 autoboot solution is not that proper but >they claim it works under 2.0. Could you please post information on who makes this and how we might contact them? Thanks, -larry -- It is not possible to both understand and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) (10/02/90)
Someone here in Germany has done this. His driver is available as chip set for the 2090a and on a socalled turbo autoboot board for the poor 2090 owners (price for the latter DM 169 (these days 1$ := ~1.55DM)). He wrote this driver because of some 'features' of the SCSI part of hddisk.device. As a side effect the ST506 part was speed up ( <= 50% , 384K/sec disk dependant ). The 2090 autoboot solution is not that proper but they claim it works under 2.0. The SCSI part uses 10 byte commands optionally (which hddisk.device does not). Boots FFS (FFS in EPROM (newest version, I think)). Automount. Faster Format. Install program. No Rigid Disk Blocks. Grrr. This is the only drawback. Maybe next update? Wolfram -- No, English is not my native language and it's 23:19 now Wolfram Schmidt wschmidt@iao.fhg.de Wolfram Schmidt Teckstr. 11 W-7056 Weinstadt Germany +49-7151/62408 MET
a186@mindlink.UUCP (Harvey Taylor) (10/02/90)
In <271@rusux1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de>, wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) writes: | | Someone here in Germany has done this. His driver is available as | chip set for the 2090a A chip set to replace hddisk.device? How is this done? (and why?) Anyway, could you pass on addresses etc. or do you know if there is a North American distributor? Can 2090A owners get just the driver? Price? | [describes a "turbo autoboot board for the poor 2090"] | This sounds like what has been called the slot waster over here [an autoconfig card with roms to give the 2090 autoboot capability, sold by CBM]. From the sound of your description, the driver does not use SCSIDirect, yes? On the other claw, seeing as the Xetec CD-ROM is going to need their controller, the FastCard, does anybody know if this card supports SCSIDirect? | No, English is not my native language and it's 23:19 now Your english is a lot better than my german. ;-) <-Harvey "What we do not understand, we do not possess." -Goethe Harvey Taylor Meta Media Productions uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Harvey_Taylor a186@mindlink.UUCP
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (10/02/90)
In <3386@mindlink.UUCP>, a186@mindlink.UUCP (Harvey Taylor) writes: >In <271@rusux1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de>, wschmidt@phobix >(Wolfram Schmidt) writes: >| >| Someone here in Germany has done this. His driver is available as >| chip set for the 2090a > > A chip set to replace hddisk.device? How is this done? (and why?) > Anyway, could you pass on addresses etc. or do you know if there is a > North American distributor? Can 2090A owners get just the driver? Price? I can answer the first question... Yes, the driver can be on the ROMs on the 2090A. Why make one? Because the ROMs on the 2090A already contain the driver (hddisk.device). You can, if you have a 2090A, get rid of any instances of hddisk.device in DEVS: or sys:expansion, because the ROM code from the 2090A is loaded into memory and executed there. -larry -- It is not possible to both understand and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) (10/06/90)
In article <2067@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes: >In <271@rusux1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de>, wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) writes: ^^^^^^ Please note that my only working mail address is wschmidt@IAO.FhG.de. The news software constructs rusux1!phobix!wschmidt or so. This cannot work. [...] >Could you please post information on who makes this and how we might contact >them? > >Thanks, > -larry > >-- [...] The address is: Macro System Gahlfelderstr. 6 W-5804 Herdecke Germany Note that the 'W-' is important because in the united Germany there are many conflicts of postal codes. This is the way they solved it for now. Telephone: +49 2330 801 132 FAX: +49 2330 73055 ^ Hope this is correct. Otherwise replace with '6'. I planned to post a short review of the Product. But yesterday I discovered that the SCSI part of the driver might do something I dislike. I called them too late today (after 18.00 h, because that's cheaper) but all technicans were already gone. So this has to wait. The price for the thing is DM169.-. The price for the EPROMs plus a PAL for the 2090A was (I'm not quite sure; since this is no overused spell it seems I'll have to increase the refhresh rate of my memory) DM149.- I don't know what the Deutsche Bundesp*st wants for shipping to the US. The manual is in german of course. May be they have an english one. If you have questions send mail. I am only here at Mon's, Wed's and Fri's so i cannot answer immediately. Wolfram -- Wolfram Schmidt Regardless what some silly news software tries to tell you my email address is: wschmidt@iao.fhg.de wschmidt@IAO.FhG.de Wolfram Schmidt Teckstr. 11 W-7056 Weinstadt Germany +49-7151/62408 MET
rbabel@babylon.UUCP (Ralph Babel) (10/08/90)
In article <281@rusux1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) writes: > Well, they [Macro System] don't use RDB. They say, if RDBs > are on the drive their driver would not destroy them. RDBs > aren't used because they need to store additional > information and secondly: no RDBs ==> no RDB-viruses! Oh great! No boot-blocks, no boot-block viruses. No computers, no computer viruses. No Internet, no internet virus. No Amigas, no Amiga viruses. No sex, no HIV. No Switzerland, no SCA virus. No universe, no viruses at all! Ralph
wschmidt@phobix (Wolfram Schmidt) (10/09/90)
In article <280@rusux1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> wschmidt@IAO.FhG.de (I) write(s): [blah...] >The address is: > Macro System > Gahlfelderstr. 6 > W-5804 Herdecke > Germany [blah, blah...] >Telephone: +49 2330 801 132 FAX: +49 2330 73055 > ^ > Hope this is correct. Otherwise replace with '6'. [blah, blah, blah...] Today, I called them again. They have a new version of the driver, the install program and the handbook. It supports DirectSCSI, now. Almost everything I didn't like in their previous release has been improved. Is seems I can recommend it now. I hope my update arrives this week. Well, they don't use RDB. They say, if RDBs are on the drive their driver would not destroy them. RDBs aren't used because they need to store additional information and secondly: no RDBs ==> no RDB-viruses! Wolfram -- Wolfram Schmidt Regardless what some silly news software tries to tell you my email address is: wschmidt@iao.fhg.de wschmidt@IAO.FhG.de Wolfram Schmidt Teckstr. 11 W-7056 Weinstadt Germany +49-7151/62408 MET