Subject: Evil HP 7200i ATAPI CD burner experiences
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org, port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us>
List: port-i386
Date: 04/03/1999 15:35:59
On Sat, Apr 03, 1999 at 03:54:17AM -0500, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:

> Hi! I'm wondering if anyone has any comments with regard to HP 7200i CD
> burners.

So, as it turns out, now I have experience with HP 7200i CD burners under
NetBSD.

The verdict: It doesn't work. I'm returning it.

There were two problems:

1) With the CD burner installed, I couldn't access my normal CD drive. Trying
actually locked my system. (No panic, just locked. Odd.)

2) With the normal CD drive removed, I could see and use the HP drive as a
normal CD drive, but cdrecord couldn't see it. 'cdrecord -scanbus' told me
that there weren't any SCSI drivers available for what it saw, if I'm re-
membering correctly. 'cdrecord blah blah blah dev=/dev/cd0a' said the same.

Looking through the source, there seems to be something in place to get
NetBSD to use an ATAPI CD burner, but it didn't evidently work. To make
sure that support was actually compiling in, I removed the guards around
it, and saw exactly the same behaviour with the resulting binary as with
the clean binary. "Doh."

I don't know... I think my answer is to save up a bit and get SCSI for my
box, and then just run a SCSI tape drive for backups. The only interesting
thing that came out of this as far as NetBSD goes is some curiosity as to
why the two CD drives couldn't work together. I noted in my dmesg that
with both hooked up, the normal CD drive only showed its first line when
probed, as in:

cd0 at atapibus0 drive 0: <KENWOOD CD-ROM UCR004010    V1.00, SerN 012         *
, 1.00> type 5 cdrom removable

and not the next lines:

cd0: 32-bits data port
cd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2

whereas the CD burner presented all three on cd1. I didn't notice this until
after having things flake out.

FWIW, I did make sure that the evil IDE busses were set up properly, and I
tried a couple different combinations of controller and master/slave setting.

Oh well.

-- 
Mason Loring Bliss             ((  "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams
mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us  ))  build  their nest  with fragments  dropped
http://acheron.ne.mediaone.net ((   from day's caravan." - Rabindranath Tagore