On Fri, Jun 23, 2000 at 02:54:27AM -0700, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> Andries,
>
> Ask Jim Miller of Castlewood ORB 2.2 about this product.
>
> I asked for sample product to test and certify.
> Castlewood said NO samples, thus Linux will not have support.
> The silly think is they are less than 20 miles from me.
>
> Regardless if you can hook the device, until the offical position that
> Castlewood has taken to ignore Linux changes, I do not and will not
> support the product and any problems it cause in the OS.
>
> Jim (the person that purchased an ORB), I am sorry that I am forced to
> hold this position. Since it is most likely based on SFF-xxxx docs that
> are not valid not supported under the standards committee of T13 at this
> time, I worry that it will not comply with the OS that follows ATA-ATAPI.
Ach, Andre - not so negative!
We do our best to let Linux function well for everybody,
regardless of the cooperation of involved companies.
Linux has vfat support, but Microsoft did not cooperate.
Of course it helps a lot if a company supplies hardware,
or, more importantly, supplies the detailed data sheets
or other information required to program the stuff.
Now concerning Castlewood - these are friendly people.
I exchanged some mail with them last Fall and got some
information and some DOS utilities. Unfortunately I have
no DOS nearby, and the information was not quite enough
to write something, but at least this led to some minor
improvements in the kernel handling of removable stuff.
For the time being I am confident that they will be willing
to provide further details if we explain precisely what we need.
Concerning the hardware, I was a bit interested in playing with
it, just like you are. But being just a random Linux hacker I
never considered asking Castlewood; instead I asked some well-known
Linux company - in vain. Still, the conclusion cannot be that we
mustnt cooperate with this Linux company anymore.
Finally, concerning T13, the SFF/INF-8020 standard conflicts
with the ATA-5 standard in a number of points. As remarked by
T13 people: "No one of the ATAPI folks came to the T13 meetings",
and that is why the discrepancies in ATA-4/5 were not corrected.
But this has nothing to do with Orb support.
Andries
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 23 2000 - 21:00:25 EST