rick@Apple.COM (Rick Auricchio) (03/17/90)
Well, here's my two cents. (I often skim this newsgroup but virtually never find anything interesting, or that I'm qualified to answer.) Y'all can give me the credit/blame for the tc driver. Yes, the Apple drive is a "stringy disk", so the driver does oddball stuff to make it *look* like a straight 9-track device, which un*x is generally used to handling. This includes simulated filemarks. The source for the driver is available in Apple's "Driver Kit" or whatever it's really called. As far as I know, it's available to developers thru the direct support channels (and maybe thru APDA, which is an Apple department that distributes this kinda stuff). I don't know the legal issues on redistribution, but I *think* third parties are allowed to hack the sample driver(s) and do what they want. But don't quote me on this. Also included in the kit is a portion of kernel source (especially all the I/O stuff), and a bunch of binary files (the stuff owned by AT&T). Of course, you can't hack "built-in" kernel drivers and redistribute a new *kernel*, because AT&T won't like that. But you can distribute *configurable* drivers. Okay, now back to tc. How can I say this with relative safety? We're not allowed to comment on unannounced products. Hypothetically speaking, mind you, I might have added some model-dependent tables and routines to tc to allow somewhat easy addition of new drive types. All hypothetical, of course. I wouldn't want to leak any info. As for supporting an Archive drive, here are a few ideas/opinions. I'd make it require an 8K-byte blocking factor from the user, exactly like the Apple drive, for user convenience. Avoid confusion about blocksizes and such, and make it work identically (except for speed/capacity). Besides, an Archive won't stream if you try to write smaller than 4K anyway. I'd add the ioctl for retensioning, just for completeness. And I'd fix a couple of bugs in the existing tc driver along the way. Cheers! -- -- Rick Auricchio, Apple Computer Inc, 20525 Mariani Av MS 58A Cupertino CA 95014 sun!apple!rick OR rick@apple.COM Mooney N894AR (408) 974-4227 Never eat prunes when you're famished. My opinion is my own. My employer? They use a windsock and a fire extinguisher.
steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) (03/17/90)
In article <39534@apple.Apple.COM> rick@Apple.COM (Rick Auricchio) writes: >The source for the driver is available in Apple's "Driver Kit" or whatever >it's really called. As far as I know, it's available to developers thru the >direct support channels (and maybe thru APDA, which is an Apple department right, price is approx $100. >that distributes this kinda stuff). I don't know the legal issues on >redistribution, but I *think* third parties are allowed to hack the sample >driver(s) and do what they want. But don't quote me on this. According to the license that comes with it you can't even copy it to your hard disk. Go figure. >Also included in the kit is a portion of kernel source (especially all the >I/O stuff), and a bunch of binary files (the stuff owned by AT&T). Of course, Uhm, there wasn't much source beyond the apple device drivers. Worse yet, it didn't have the driver I needed, the one that doesn't work for the AST/Orange micro serial abortion card. > But you can distribute *configurable* drivers. Actually the license doesn't say you can do that, at least not if your driver is derived from anything in the package. They really need to straighten out the mumbo-jumbo if they expect it to be taken seriously. -- Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services (713) 964-2462 "You have no scars on your face, and you cannot handle pressure." - Billy Joel