Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!emory!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!alice!andrew From: andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi Subject: Re: SCSI Disk Controller Summary: while you're doing that.... Message-ID: <10994@alice.UUCP> Date: 28 Jun 90 07:36:27 GMT References: <9174@odin.corp.sgi.com> Distribution: comp Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ Lines: 16 while sgi is tweaking its scsi disk controller, perhaps it could allow the use of optical media at the same time. this media can be used by exactly the same commands (common disk subset) that the driver uses for the regular (magnetic) disk but no, the driver cleverly looks up what thing it is and says, "nah nah! i could but i won't." admittedly, the optical disks present one problem not normally (but possibly) present in magnetic disks: the media may not be spun up when you want to access (and thus needs a scsi START command). this handles the media removal stuff as well as magnetic disks which don't spinup on powerup. i guess what i am really asking for is simple 'raw disk' access to all types of scsi media that can be controlled with the common disk subset that is already used by the regular disk driver.