Subject: Re: floppy support - how soon?
To: gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>
From: Dan Winship <danw@MIT.EDU>
List: port-macppc
Date: 09/16/1999 19:57:02
> I would love to see that source, if you've got it. I'm (for obvious
> reasons) not the person to talk to about getting it in the NetBSD
> tree, but if I can hack my floppy driver into working stably enough
> for tripwire, I'll be happy.

If you had a working driver, I'm sure someone could deal with getting
it into the tree (assuming it had a reasonable license). (If you had a
working driver that conformed to /usr/share/misc/style it would
probably get in even faster. :-)

> Again, if no one else is working on this, I'd be willing to take a
> whack at it.

I don't think anyone is working on it.

> Doesn't port-mac68k have floppy support?

I believe they support one of the two mac68k floppy chips, but I
forget if it's the old one or the new one. If it's the new one, and if
the PPCs use the same chip, it would probably be a better starting
point than the Linux ones. (Check the mail archives, there should be a
link from http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/mac68k/)

> (Along those lines, doesn't port-mac68k have nubus support? Why
> doesn't port-macppc then? Because of the differences between 68k
> motorolas and PPCs instead of between PCI and nubus busses?)

This is sort of discussed in the FAQ
(http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/faq.html), but it's mostly that
NetBSD/macppc requires Open Firmware, and there are no Open Firmware
NuBus Macs. Making port-macppc support NuBus would be a lot of work,
and some people have expressed interest in seeing it happen, but no
one has expressed interest in doing it yet. :)


re: an earlier message:
> In the interim, has there been any luck using externel SCSI zip drives?

That's just MESH. They work fine if you have an Adaptec SCSI card. Or
you might be able to buy a PCI USB card and use a USB Zip drive if
you're running -current. 

[I'm not sure how secure the Zip write-protection scheme is though.
It's all in software... it might be possible to spoof the drive
somehow.]

-- Dan