On Fri, 22 May 1998, Ruschmeyer, John wrote:

> >        Presumably there is a Macos driver that sets up the environment
> >        such that the DOS or Win95 can run OK. If you can get something
> >        in NetBSD to do the same then it should be possible to run DOS
> >        or Win95 on the card.
> 
> I don't own one of these (my latest Mac is a IIfx), but i seem to recall
> that
> the problem is the lack of 32-bit drivers for the board.
> 
> I vaugely recall that someone was trying to get Linux running on one, but
> it involved writing a disk driver that would use the PC BIOS (ick!).

Aren't they doing their accesses to a virtual disk... a file on the MacOS
side?  Do the drivers that allow Win95 to work actually go through the
BIOS, or do they have a special means of accessing the files that nobody's
figured out yet?  :-)

I would think that, while a BIOS solution might work, it'd be dog slow
(though I could easily be wrong) and depending on the BIOS they used,
might also have a limit on the maximum drive size usable... or was it
maximum partition size?  

I'd think it would be much better to disassemble the '95 drivers and see
what tricks they use to access the data... because I'd bet they're a lot
faster and more flexible than a BIOS workaround.  Alternately, don't most
of the systems with the DOS cards have DMA SCSI?  By any chance could the
drivers take advantage of that to control the SCSI hardware directly
without totally munging things for the Mac-side?  Just a thought.


David

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/CC/FA/H/L/MC/M/MU/PA/TW d-@ s:>- a-- C++++>$ UBLAS*++++>$
P+?>$ L+++>$ !E--- W+++>$ N++(+++)>+++$ !o? K-? !w--- !O
M++>$ !V-- PS+>$ !PE- Y+>$ PGP+>$ t+++>$ 5+>++++$ !X- !R tv+>$
b++>$ !DI !D- G++(+++)>$ e>++++ h--! r--- !y-
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------