Subject: Re: SDLT 320 Tape Drive on -current
To: Duncan McEwan <duncan@mcs.vuw.ac.nz>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
List: current-users
Date: 06/27/2003 20:36:05
On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 05:03:33PM +1200, Duncan McEwan wrote:
> [...]
> Is it at all possible that there could be bugs in the ahc driver when running
> on a aic7899 controller that might cause it to mis-interpret what the hardware
> is telling it?  Or is the code that reports error conditions so simple that
> "it must be correct"...?

From the adapter POV, reading/writing data, or getting an error message is
the same: it's just a command to handle. Now, some controllers have
automatic sense handling, and will send the request sense command themselve.
But in this case I guess it would return bogus sense for any errors.
This would have others consequences e.g. during bootup, or when the
tape drive is empty and we try to access it.
It's possible that the drive has a firmware bug, and returns the wrong
sense information in some cases.

BTW, I'm using DLT drives with both siop and aic7xxx under 1.6.x, without
major problems.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 24 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--