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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!ceylon!genesis!steve2 From: steve2@genesis.nred.ma.us (Steve Gerakines) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: floppy tape drivers Message-ID: <CGGC2E.Fvp@genesis.nred.ma.us> Date: 13 Nov 93 22:35:01 GMT References: <haley.753009944@scws3> <2bulaq$5t@news.sprintlink.net> Organization: Genesis Public Access Unix +1 508 664 0149 Lines: 26 Vadim Antonov says: >Floppy-tape driver is not a big deal to write -- it takes about a month. I think you're off by a couple of months. :-) Perhaps if the tape hardware was all well documented, consistent, and the vendors were willing to support outside developers, then yes. Most of the information I got for working on my driver was gained through experimentation. Once you get by the initial hurdle of simply communicating with the drive, you have to start trying to comply to the silly QIC standards. If it only took a month, I'm sure we'd see more of them around. Not that it matters, but the only reason I started working on the driver myself was that I was tired of hearing Jesus' promises over several months of a driver in the works and seeing nothing. If I at least saw some signs of progress, I probably wouldn't have bothered at all. Off the subject, but could someone who has better access to the internet than I, please start a request for discussion on the creation of a comp.os.386bsd.advocacy newsgroup? We really should only keep the bickering in one place. In my opinion, it really hurts any chance of having any kind of professionalism with our systems. If I was thinking about going to a free BSD system, after reading a few of the articles I've seen over the last few days, my mind would be made up before even trying them. - Steve steve2@genesis.nred.ma.us