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- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!cltr.uq.OZ.AU!news
- From: vthrc@mailbox.uq.oz.au
- Subject: (Q) driver for 20M floptical on SCSI
- Message-ID: <1992Dec14.081655.1703@cltr.uq.OZ.AU>
- Sender: news@cltr.uq.OZ.AU (Mr. Time Waster)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: arundel.vthrc.uq.oz.au
- Organization: Vision, Touch & Hearing Research Centre
- Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 08:16:55 GMT
- Lines: 53
-
- perhaps somebody might be able to answer a simple question that our dealer
- doesn't seem able to: is there an OS/2 driver for an Insite 20M floptical
- drive? We are currently running one under DOS with a Grassroots SCSI adaptor,
- but that card incorporates an EPROM BIOS instead of a driver (see below). Maybe
- some generic SCSI disk driver (for removables) would work, but the Grassroots
- approach is nice cause it allows you to use it as a standard floppy drive as
- well as supporting the 20M disks. I'm quite ignorant on OS/2, so I don't know
- whether such a driver would be layered on top of the Adaptec SCSI driver or
- exists as a standalone, but we'd be prepared to sacrifice the ability to boot
- from the floptical and use it purely for the 20M disks.
-
- Even if the Grassroots adaptor worked under OS/2, we're running out of slots
- and would prefer to hang the floptical off an Adaptec 1[5,7]42. Nevertheless
- I'd be interested to know whether the Grassroots card would work under OS/2.
-
- PS normally I prefer monitoring relevent newsgroups before moving to a new
- machine/OS, but this time around I don't have that luxury although I did scan
- the FAQ.
-
- PPS due to problems with our newsreader, I'd prefer to receive email replies
- and if there's enough interest I'll post a summary.
-
- cheers,
- X500: @c=AU
- @o=University of Queensland
- @ou=Physiology and Pharmacology Department
- @ou=Vision Touch and Hearing
- @cn=Danny Thomas
- @rfc822Mailbox=vthrc@cc.uq.oz.au
-
-
- some relevant sections from the Grassroots manual may be interesting, though
- we'd prefer to use the existing [disk] Adaptec controller to save a slot:
- "Host-bus adaptor includes its own BIOS, so drivers aren't required. Boots
- MSDOS using 20M, 1.44M and 720K diskettes. Compatible with MSDOS versions 3.30,
- 4.01, and 5.00."
-
- "[using BIOS instead of driver] This was done for three principal reasons:
- FIRST, to take advantage of MSDOS's good support for removability in floppy
- devices; MSDOS versions 3.30 and 4.01 have incomplete support for removable
- disks in the standard built-in hard-disk drivers. As a result of treating
- removable disk drives as floppies, there are no precautions or pitfalls
- associated with disk changes as there are when removable disk-drives are
- treated as hard-disks.
- SECOND, since DOSs standard, built-in floppy drivers are adequate for use with
- 20M floppies, a BIOS approach makes it unnecessary to load special drivers via
- CONFIG.SYS. Eliminating these drivers is an effective way of circumventing
- their memory consumption as well as their compatability problems and the
- confusion they cause for end users.
- THIRDLY, using a BIOS instead of special drivers makes it possible to boot
- MSDOS directly from Insite's 20M diskettes exactly as you would boot from any
- floppy."
-
-