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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.bugs:1501 comp.os.linux:55366 Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs,comp.os.linux Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!howland.reston.ans.net!xlink.net!gmd.de!mururoa!veit From: veit@mururoa.gmd.de (Holger Veit) Subject: Forward: QIC-80 Message-ID: <1993Sep26.203329.10048@gmd.de> Sender: news@gmd.de (USENET News) Nntp-Posting-Host: mururoa Organization: GMD - German National Research Center for Computer Science X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5 Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1993 20:33:29 GMT Lines: 74 I am posting the following letter for someone who has no access to netnews. If you have questions or comments, please followup here, but also send a reply to the mail address in the signature of the letter. This is not my plea, I'm just forwarding, so don't mail to me on this. This is also crossposted to comp.os.linux, although the letter mentions 386bsd/NetBSD, since it might be a common problem. I have already replied to this person, that some experimental versions for such code is existing, but it could be a good idea to try to get support from the hardware vendors as well. Holger ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From kkou@leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr Sun Sep 26 20:55:51 1993 Return-Path: <kkou@leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr> Received: by fanoe.gmd.de id AA06628; Sun, 26 Sep 93 20:55:50 +0100 Received: by borneo.gmd.de id AA16352; Sun, 26 Sep 93 20:55:51 +0100 Received: from leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr by gmdzi.gmd.de with SMTP id AA04845 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <Holger.Veit@gmd.de>); Sun, 26 Sep 1993 20:54:18 +0100 Received: by leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr (5.65/25-MHS-7.0) id AA27137; Sun, 26 Sep 93 21:51:59 +0200 Date: Sun, 26 Sep 93 21:51:59 +0200 From: Kostas Kourakis <kkou@leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr> Message-Id: <9309261951.AA27137@leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr> To: Holger.Veit@gmd.de Subject: QIC-40/80 Streamer support in Net/386BSD Status: RO Dear Dr Veit, I've seen your suggestion regarding the creation of support for the Mitsumi CD Rom Drive, and certainly it's a wise move, I could never understand why very popular and cheap hardware was kind of "snubbed at" my most of the recent OS (including Unixware, NT etc.). There's though an area that needs even more attention (in my opinion at least), namely the support for the most popular (and cheap) streamers. I'm sure very few can afford QIC-02 or SCSI-based tape strea- mers, however, almost everybody I know has a Colorado or Irwin model (that can be had for less than a _third_ of the price of a QIC-02 or a SCSI model) (thanks to Microsoft, due to the inherent instability of Windows it made everybody buy a streamer ;-) ). On the other hand I gather it's not that practical for the pro- grammers that do most of the work on Net/386BSD to sit and write drivers from scratch, it'll be much easier to put some pressure on the respective ventors to create themselves the drivers. The reason is that each brand has a few variations, e.g. Colorado comes as 125Mb model with or without the FC10 or FC20 controller, or as 250Mb model ditto, thus it'll be rather a lot to ask the Net/386BSD programmers to cater for all variations. The ventors on the other hand can do it rather easily. What's needed is that as many as possible of the prominent people involved in Net/386BSD such as yourself, Messrs Chris Demetriou, Nate Williams, Terry Lambert et al. would write or email Colorado and Irwin and pressure them to create the drivers (just drivers will do fine, no need for more sophisticated software like Colorado's "jtape" for SCO/ISC ). I'm sure they'll _have_ to pay heed to what people of your stand- ing say to them. I've taken the liberty to include here the mail and Compuserve address of Colorado, just in case you feel like supporting this idea. These are: Colorado Memory Systems, 800 South Taft Avenue Loveland CO 80537 - 9929 , USA Compuserve users can leave messages for Colorado Memory Systems Inc. in IBMHW Forum/Session 4 at the following address : (CO_MEM_SYS) SUPPORT 71621,3022 Thus, for Interneters, just email 71621.3022@compuserve.com (if I'm not wrong). Unfortunately my local host does not cary netnews, so I've no way to put a relevant message in comp.os.386bsd.*, however, if you feel like posting any part or all of this message in these areas just to see how many users respond in favor, please fell free to do it. Best regards, Konstandinos Kourakis (kkou@leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr)