Capt Avram Dorfman writes:

> Has anyone tried mounting, or booting from a Jaz disk? 
> Is it any different than using a regular hard disk? 
> Is it possible to eject Jaz disks on the fly?
> Do you have to do anything special to set a Jaz disk up?

My experience is that a Jaz should work fine with NetBSD.  I planned to
start writing up a Jaz-HOWTO last night, but finishing up the Install-
HOWTO took a little longer than I'd planned. (Haven't posted it yet,
either.)  I've had it running under 1.2.1; I plan to re-partition the
cartridge and install 1.3 this week (the official 1.3 is out now, see
www.netbsd.org).

In brief, here are the things to look out for.  This info has been
gleaned from the mailing-list archives; I'm just trying to pull it
together.

  - Non-68040 machines should use the SBC kernels.  Didn't you say
    you were using an SE/30?  Try that & see if it helps.
  
  - Get the latest Jaz drivers from ftp.iomega.com (jaz501.hqx or
    something like that).  These let you configure the drive under
    MacOS to *not* eject on a restart (very important!).  I also
    turn on verify-after-write, and it doesn't slow things down
    appreciably on a IIsi.  My system complains about the driver
    being wrong after rebooting back into MacOS and inserting a new
    cartridge, but otherwise there are no ill effects.
  
  - mkfs doesn't get the geometry right; you have to enter the
    correct numbers.  (I have them at home, and I'm at work, you
    know the tune...)
    
  - Using a Jaz drive for a NetBSD boot disk should be considered
    a temporary solution.  Jaz drives, in the consumer versions at
    least, tend to overheat after a few hours & you'll start seeing
    errors.  (I've used a Jaz for an entire evening at a stretch
    without problems, but the cartridge was quite warm when I shut
    down.)  It's great for large occasional-use data, like source
    code archives or backups.

I don't know about eject on the fly -- if you're using a Jaz cart
as a boot disk, that sounds like a good way to cause a kernel panic.
Otherwise, you *should* be able to eject it the same way you do a
CD-ROM.

I'll send an announcement to the list when I have the Jaz-HOWTO ready
for y'all to look at.

	Larry Kollar
	please send responses to my home address: kollar@stc.net