Subject: Re: Teac 600mb tape drive supported?
To: Jell-O <wookie@us.net>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@loki.stanford.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 05/09/1996 17:34:00
> 
> Some of the drives with "variable geometry" have some problems with NetBSD.  For the
> time being, don't think about using a Zip drive for your root device.  It'll give
> you a headache for all the reinstalls that you'll have to do.  A Zip drive would be
> helpful for extra storage though.  Using a Zip as a secondary drive shouldn't be too
> much of a problem.  

Jon,

I gather you have one? I'm confused as I don't remember reports of
botched installs, just "faking geometry" complaints. The deal is
that faking geometry complaints are a bit of a red herring. We just
need variables to fill in such that we get the whole disk.

When this came up on current-users, I seem to remember a big thread
about the fact that given how much can go on inside the drive, the
kernel is being a bit silly in demanding things like sectors/track,
etc. Especially as on some drives sectors/track is variable!

Since we're changing the SCSI driver, does it now work better with
the new one? We might have been having SCSI driver problems. Hmm.
Now that I think about it, I think we did. I sit corrected. :-)
But I do bet that they were driver problems, not geometry problems.

Take care,

Bill