On 01/31/2014 09:30 AM, Doc wrote:
On 1/30/14 7:43 PM, Jules Richardson wrote:
On 01/30/2014 05:01 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Jules Richardson
> <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
I think I'd quite like something that made an
entire PC look like a SCSI
device, making archival/backup onto modern media trivial (or quick
selection of different drive images). I don't think there's a natural
interface on a modern PC to do it, though; it's basically USB or
nothing, and I don't think there's a way of making a PC's USB interface
act as though it were a slave device being controlled by something else.
I've used FreeBSD to emulate a FC device, and while that was a few years
ago, I'm fairly certain that SCSI is also supported if the local SCSI
adapter supports target mode (the Adaptec AIC-7something chipset was one).
A little googling suggest that the targ(4) driver is your starting point.
Yes, I thought that some of the SCSI HBA's could do it, and that there was
at least limited support in various OSes (we actually had that config on a
pair of SGI machines many years ago, and I think they were AIC-7xxx
boards). I do have some AIC-7xxx boards, but in storage; I think the only
one I have here with me is an AHA-1520B ISA card.
It seems a pity that there's no "available to the masses" way of getting
the data into a PC these days, though. Although perhaps I'm
misunderstanding how USB works, and a connected device can happily shovel
data into a PC as needed - it just needs the PC to make the initial call.
cheers
Jules