>However, I have somewhere in the back of my mind a tick-mark against
>them, but I can't remember what it was for.  Perhaps it was for being
>overpriced (compare to the NCR-based cards), or for not moving to CAM
>(see http://www.ultranet.com/~gfield/gary/scsigame.txt)

It's nice to see someone else list CAM as the "right way" to write
a SCSI layer.  I don't agree with everything he says about cabling on
that page though.

>, or for going
>to the software-configurable-only cards, or for being hard to get in
>touch with (I think someone said it was "like trying reach someone at
>IBM"), or because I heard they weren't releasing programmer specs, or
>perhaps it was some second-hand information I heard about the 294[04]UW
>in the Linux newsgroups.

Adaptec has always released enough information for you to write NDA free
drivers for their cards.  It's just not a very simple task since you
have to write your own firmware.

>Wait a minute, memory flash; is the 2940 the card which involves
>downloading some code at boot time to the embedded processor (or
>is it the sequencer engine), and they consider(ed) that protocol
>proprietary, and the free Unix people had to reverse-engineer it?

The instruction set and protocol for downloading the code are available
to anyone who calls their technical documents department and asks for
the right data book.  They refused to release their firmware though as
many of the things it does to work around "broken devices" they do
consider to be proprietary.

--
Justin