Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!noao!arizona!amethyst!mat From: mat@zeus.opt-sci.arizona.edu (Mat Watson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: 3rd party optical drives Message-ID: Date: 21 Jun 91 17:29:11 GMT References: <1216@chem.ucsd.EDU> <1991Jun21.041827.23249@talon.UCS.ORST.EDU> Organization: University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center Lines: 32 In-reply-to: mcgredo@bluto.ie.orst.edu's message of 21 Jun 91 04:18:27 GMT In article <1991Jun21.041827.23249@talon.UCS.ORST.EDU> mcgredo@bluto.ie.orst.edu (Don McGregor) writes: From: mcgredo@bluto.ie.orst.edu (Don McGregor) Susan Fichera writes > > I'm still looking for sources of 3rd party optical drives > for the NeXT. Has anyone tried hooking up the various Mac-ish SCSI ISO optical drives? Seems like it should work in theory. I just called NeXT technical support, and the agent who spoke to me indicated that special software is required. Specifically one needs to have a device driver capable of controlling the 3rd party drive from the NeXT across the SCSI buss (apparently all SCSI devices are not created equal :-) ). One company which sells such a beast (you get the driver with the drive) is NeXTConnection. For a mere $3875 they will sell you a SONY 600MB drive (which cannot read NeXT optical disks). This is way outside my budget for an optical drive, but so far it is the only one I've found with a device driver for the NeXT. Shall I write my own device driver, or is that a path tread only by the immortal? :-) I've messed around with sockets and ioctl. Does this qualify hack the next kernel? Does my Sun Unix documentation on device drivers apply to the NeXT/Mach combination? Has someone else already done this? Sure would save me some time if they have. Cheers to all, --Mat mat@zeus.opt-sci.arizona.edu