Ian Soboroff <ian@cs.umbc.edu>:
> Just recently got a new ultralight laptop, with both the floppy drive
> and CDROM external (Dell Latitude CS). Allegedly, under Windows, one
> can plug in the CDROM or the floppy without rebooting and it works
> fine. Both the floppy and the CD plug into a proprietary expansion
> port on side of the machine using the same cable.
>
> (I say "allegedly", since I didn't even boot the installed
> Windows before blowing it away, and the included Win2k has that new
> bastard licensing scheme that won't install under VMWare, but that's
> another post.)
>
> I'm running 2.2.17pre4 (+ USB and a couple little fixes floated here
> on the list), and have ide-cd compiled as a module.
>
> Interestingly, the floppy drive works when hotplugged... apparently,
> even though on boot there isn't a floppy drive connected to the
> system, the controller's existence is enough for Linux.
>
> No such luck with the CD. When the machine is booted with the CD
> connected, the kernel assigns it /dev/hdc (so the external IDE is a
> separate channel), but without the CD plugged it, it doesn't detect
> anything on that device. "modprobe ide-cd; mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom"
> gives the error "Can't locate module block-major-22".
>
> If I boot with the CD connected, disconnect it after boot, and then
> reconnect it, it works fine.
>
> Is there any way to rescan the IDE bus for a device like this after
> boot-time? I know with the PCMCIA drivers, I can connect a PCCard IDE
> hard disk and get a new IDE bus, but I'm not sure if there's an
> equivalent case here. Is this possible right now with Linux?
Yes. maybe... This might work - there is a module called probe-ide that
scanns IDE controllers. I use this on a SCSI based system to identify
the CD. If I don't use it, then I can't use the CD. It appears to scan
the IDE when loaded, so it can't be unloaded until I unload the CD. If I
do, the system seems to forget the IDE devices.
This may not work when the system disk is also IDE.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse I Pollard, II
Email: pollard@navo.hpc.mil
Any opinions expressed are solely my own.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 23 2000 - 21:00:22 EST