Subject: Re: AIC-7899 & RAIDFrame SCSI problems in 1.5.2
To: NetBSD User's Discussion List <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Justin T. Gibbs <gibbs@scsiguy.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 03/12/2002 15:58:19
>> Actually, the driver in FreeBSD hasn't had any serious commits in
>> 6 months now.
>
>Ah!  I haven't looked at it in that long!  ;-)
>
>But this is very good news -- it suggests the current version is quite
>stable (and my own use of it confirms that for at least one setup).

There is a performance and target mode update in the works, but yes,
the driver is quite stable.

>> But sure, we need to update ours. The main problem
>> will always be that we never got any docs for the thing, even
>> though we begged Adaptec. Porting the newer version will help
>> there, since it'll make pulling over fixes a lot easier.
>
>Justin Gibbs seems to have a very good handle on how to talk to those
>chips.  Do you know if he was able to get docs from Adaptec?

I work for Adaptec.  I can't do anything to help with getting out
documentation though. That policy is set by individuals I have not been
able to sway to my line of thinking.

However, there isn't a single piece of documentation that Adaptec ever
published that would aid in porting this driver to NetBSD.  In otherwords,
the interfaces of interest only have source code documenation.  Much
lesser programmers than those working on NetBSD have ported this driver
to "the random custom RTOS" or other custom system with no documentation other
than the source code and little to no interaction with me.  Don't let the
lack of documenation be an excuse for not upgrading the driver.

My mailbox is always open to questions about the driver, how it works,
bug fixes, improvements, etc.

--
Justin