home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
BURKS 2
/
BURKS_AUG97.ISO
/
BURKS
/
LINUX
/
HOWTO
/
mini
/
lf1000.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1997-07-07
|
13KB
|
318 lines
Linux - Panasonic LF1000 Optical Disk mini HOWTO
************************************************
version 1.1 - March 29, 1996
=============================
This file applies to PC based systems only.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimers
============
Neither the author nor the distributors of this HOWTO are in any way
responsible for physical, financial, or moral damage incurred by following
the suggestions in this text.
Copyright
==========
The Linux Panasonic LF1000 Optical Disk mini HOWTO is copyrighted
(C) 1996 by Skip Rye. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and
distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long
as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution
is allowed and encouraged. The author, however, would like to be notified
of any such distributions. All translations, derivative works, or aggregate
works incorporating any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under
this copyright notice. In other words, you may not produce a derivative work
from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution.
Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions. In short,
we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many
channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the
HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to
redistribute the HOWTOs. Should you have any questions, please contact
Greg Hankins, the Linux HOWTO coordinator, at gregh@sunsite.unc.edu.
You may finger his address for phone number and additional contact
information.
Phase Change Optical Technology
================================
Optical Phase Change technology is used to create "In Phase" or "Out of
Phase" bits on a special media for phase change writing. The drive uses a
LASER of different power levels or LASER intensities to produce this
effect. One power level allows the media to flow into a crystalline form
while the other creates an "Out of Phase" condition. The crystallized areas
reflect the read Lasers beam with a different coefficient of reflectivity than
the non-crystallized areas. Thus, data can be read from the disk.
What makes the phase change optical disk special is that it the disk is
formated with concentric cylinders or tracks with each track being sectored
much like a magnetic disk or read/write optical disk. The tracks are very
close so a lot of data can be stored on a disk. This is different from a
CD-ROM in that it gives your system the look and feel of a magnetic disk.
CD-ROMs have a spiraling track much like a audio record. Having tracks
and sectors alone would not make the phase change drive special from
optical disk but the drive has some very special properties; The phase change
drive allows for direct overwrite of data which magneto optical can't do
inexpensively and the media has the very special property of NOT being
susceptible to magnetic fields or as sensitive to static discharge which gives
the media a very long shelf life.
POINTS OF INTEREST
===================
o Less than $500.
o If You already have a SCSI controller they may provide you with and
extra disk instead.
o Read/Write optical disk.
o Can read CD-ROMs at 4X speed.
o Can read Kodak PhotoCDs.
o Media has a 15 Year shelf life.
o SCSI-2 Interface.
o Track/sector format as opposed to CD-ROMs spiraling record
format.
o 165ms access time - much better than a tape file restore.
o 650Mb data storage per diskette.
o Diskettes are about $50 each.
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
=======================
o It is unknown if the SCSI controller sold with the drive will work
for Linux. If you find that it or other controllers work, please
E-Mail me!
o Optical disk format not compatible with any other disk drive.
However, it does have a fair chance of being the next A drive for
PCs.
o Vendors don't seem to support UNIX very well, to bad $$$ -
marketing is targeted for DOS/Windows and Macintosh.
o It seems that the "Use LU" jumper setting works for both Linux and
DOS even though the manual for DOS says to not use LUs? So you
don't have to change jumper settings between DOS/Windows and
Linux.
Installation
=============
The LF1000 is SCSI-2 compatible device. It features a block size of 512
bytes and is compatible with the Linux SCSI drivers. This drive was
installed on a PC compatible AMD 100MHZ 486 with an Adaptic 1542C
SCSI bus-master controller. To install and mount a read/write optical disk
the following steps were taken;
Installation steps :
o Install the drive and set the SCSI address to not interfere with other
SCSI devices. Reconnect all cabling.
o Boot the computer. Your SCSI controller should note the new drive.
o During the Linux kernel boot, you should see an additional SCSI
device. In my case, having a magnetic system disk for device /dev/sda
it shows up as /dev/sdb.
o I did NOT partition the device because fdisk issued an overwrite
warning and I did not want to change anything from a dosemu
standpoint.
o mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sdb
o mkdir /pd
o mount -t ext2 -o ro,suid,dev,exec,auto,nouser,async /dev/sdb /pd -
Read only
o mount -t ext2 -o defaults /dev/sdb /pd - Mount drive W/R
Your ready to "Rock'n'Roll"
Usage hints
============
Currently it is unknown if the SCSI kernel driver will support switch-able
device modes - ie. CD-ROM ISO 9660 format and ext2 file-systems. If
someone knows please E-mail me.
When Linux boots, it should recognize your new SCSI drive? ie sda or sdb
device. Here is a cutout of the demsg command. Notice it detected the
MATSHITA drive. You should get a similar message.
Note : The three lines below "Adding Swap" line was because Linux was
booted for pd use. If a CD-ROM was in the drive at boot time the driver
would have mounted it as /cdrom using ISO 9660 format. YOU MUST
BOOT LINUX WITH A CD-ROM INSTALLED TO USE THE DRIVE
AS A CD-ROM. Once Linux is booted with a CD-ROM it is simple a
matter of doing a "umount /cdrom" to change media. The new CD-ROM
would of course have to be re-mounted. A shell is provided below to assist
you with this, just cut it out to a file say "mgrpd" and do "sh mgrpd"
#------------------------ Cut of demsg command -------------------------------
Configuring Adaptec at IO:330, IRQ 11, DMA priority 5
scsi0 : Adaptec 1542
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: QUANTUM Model: PD1050iS Rev: 3110
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, id 0, lun 0
Vendor: MATSHITA Model: PD-1 LF-1000 Rev: A109
Type: Optical Device ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sdb at scsi0, id 1, lun 0
scsi : detected 2 SCSI disks total.
SCSI Hardware sector size is 512 bytes on device sda
SCSI Hardware sector size is 512 bytes on device sdb
Linux version 1.2.13 (root@bigkitty) (gcc version 2.7.0) #1 Wed Aug 23 03:54:14
CDT 1995
Partition check:
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4
sdb: bad partition table
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) read-only.
Adding Swap: 34812k swap-space
end_request: I/O error, dev 2100, sector 64
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev 0x2100 iso_blknum 16
Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
------------------------ Cut of demsg command -------------------------------
I've got an Adaptec 1452C SCSI controller with Slackware's "scsinet1"
kernel . It works fine with that configuration. Note, if your controller is
different check the SCSI-HOWTO by Drew Eckhardt for comments.
To aid in using the LF1000 drive here is a shell. You are free to use the shell
but please keep the copyright with it.
--------------------------------- Cut Here ---------------------------------
#@/@/@ mgrpd ABR Linux 1.2.13 486 mgr shell for phase change drive
#************************************************************************#
# #
# program : mgrpd #
# #
#