Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sunybcs!ugkamins
From: ugkamins@sunybcs.uucp (Dr. R. Chandra)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: SCSI disks
Message-ID: <6560@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 16 Jun 89 05:39:19 GMT
Sender: nobody@cs.Buffalo.EDU
Reply-To: ugkamins@marvin.cs.buffalo.edu (Dr. R. Chandra)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 37

I often have the need for a dictionary while reading UseNet, not only
for checking on my spelling while writing articles and e-mail replies,
but also for looking up the many new words I learn from reading the
articles on the net.  It is likely that even some of the
highest-capacity hard disks could not hold a sufficient amount of
information for a decent abridged dictionary.  I cannot remember what
specific works were put on compact disc by (I think it was) MicroSoft,
but I think one of them was a dictionary.

Since seemingly the most popular way of adding a hard disk to an Amiga
system (of almost any flavor) is to add it through an SCSI interface,
and SCSI is not just a hard disk interface, I was wondering if there
are any compact disc readers (CD ROMdrives) that can be attached to an
SCSI port.

Also, has anyone developed a general device driver for
SCSI?  One could OpenDevice(SCSI_NAME, SCSI_dev_num, &IOReqBlk, 0) and
address any physical device number attached to the interface.  Are the
commands the same to write/read/etc. to all devices?  I thought they would be.
Of course, each device will have its own specific private commands (it
wouldn't be appropriate to format a compact disc, at least not until
writable ones are more prevalent, such as THOR).

Given something like that, and the layout of the dictionary disc, I
could write my own popup dictionary lookup program.  I dislike having
to manually look up the words when I know that a computer can do it
so much faster and more easily!
---
a-WYSIWYG, a-WYSIWIG                      _ _
a-WYSIWYG, a-WYSIWIG                     ////
a-WYSIWYG, a-WYSIWIG                    ////
a-WYSIWYG, a-WYSIWIG                   ////
In the jungle                   _ _   ////
The silicon jungle              \\\\ ////
The process sleeps tonight       \\\////
                                  \_X_/
ugkamins@sunybcs.UUCP   (UnderGraduate john KAMINSki)