>On Fri, Dec 04, 1998 at 10:19:03AM -0800, Sean J. Schluntz wrote:
>> Is there currently anyone working on the driver for the NCR 53c810?  I've 
>> noticed that a number of people going back in the lists mention that the 
>> driver is having problems.  Unfortunately I don't have much c experience 
>> so I can't be of much help or I would tackle it.
>
>The driver "has problems" because its architecture is better suited to a
>sadistic torture mechanism or a Rube Goldberg Contest for programmers
>entry than a SCSI adapter device driver.  Add to that a more or less
>complete disregard for error handling, and...
>
>...someone is just going to have to step up, sooner or later, and rewrite
>it.  It's hard to see what else there is to do about it.
>
>If it works for you, great. :-)  If you have a 53c875 card (or one of
>the other 53x8xx variants with onboard command cache ram) you may
>avoid some problems -- and possibly improve performance -- on the
>i386 by disabling NCR_IOMAPPED, which keeps the driver from using
>the command cache.  I'd be interested in hearing some results from
>anyone who can test this both ways...

Hmm, well unfortunately at the moment I'm running on an Alpha, and it 
does not stay up long enough for me to run a build of the kernel because 
of what appears to be SCSI problems. Even if I could I'm quite a ways 
from being able to work on, or especially rewrite a SCSI driver. I may 
have to look in to using the IDE interface on this thing but that means 
I'm going to have to scrape up a 2 1/2" drive.

The Multia looks like a good box, if I could get it running reliably.

-Sean

---
Sean J. Schluntz                           schluntz@agames.com
Sr. Office Systems Administrator                  408-434-5804
Atari Games Corporation                  http://www.agames.com