19 Jan
2007
19 Jan
'07
1 p.m.
Al Kossow wrote:
Interesting. What OS platform and HBA was this for?
I've been on the lookout for some sort of solution for a few years, but so far
haven't found anything for Linux, DOS, or Windows that'll do the job. I don't
mind coding SCSI commands in C using such as Linux's 'sg' interface, but I
wouldn't know where to start when it came to programming a HBA itself.
I know that Linux "offlines" any device that doesn't meet more modern SCSI
protocols (in particular it hates anything that doesn't support a native
Inquiry command at boot time - which rules out a lot of vintage SCSI devices
even though they're otherwise compatible electrically). Perhaps other OSes are
better suited though and I've just not stumbled across the right code anywhere.
It may be that you were just "lucky" though. I have a feeling that the ACB4000
may well be unusual for devices of that sort of time period, in that it's
"proper" SCSI rather than SASI or "SCSI with bits missing". It well
just
cooperate with low-level drivers well enough to allow the user access once the
OS has booted.
Devices from Emulex, Xebec and OMTI are probably less-compliant (and the most
recent I've found is the Philips VP-415 laserdisc player), but as a community
we could do with a way of talking to them from "modern" hardware.
cheers
Jules
Actually,
I've never needed to try this - but is it reasonable to
expect a
"modern" system to be able to archive
(using dd) a SCSI drive that's
been
formatted to something other than a 512 byte
block size?
I think it is. Modern systems will be the ones that have mass storage systems
and networks capable of dealing with disc dumps.
When I've done this, though, I've written my own disc dumping code using
SCSI command blocks to the low-level interface.
This was necessary for archiving TI Explorer discs, which have 256 byte
blocks but are SCSI devices (MFM drive and ACB 4000 host adapter).