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From: kientzle@netcom.com
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.0 & new Mitsumi CD-ROMs ?
Message-ID: <kientzleD25Fs0.Csr@netcom.com>
Summary: They don't work.
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3er60b$aqd@spirit.dynas.se>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 17:40:47 GMT
Lines: 28
In article <3er60b$aqd@spirit.dynas.se>,
Goran Hammarback <goran@dynas.se> wrote:
>Since the old 2x Mitsumi Fx001 drives are no longer readily
>available (they are no longer manufactured), I wonder if
>anyone has any experience with the new 3x and 4x drives
>Mitsumi makes. Does anyone know if they work with FreeBSD 2.0?
I have a Mitsumi FX400, the quad-speed IDE-interface drive. It
does NOT work with the stock FreeBSD 2.0 kernel, and as far as I can
tell, there's no optional support for it.
Two interesting things I found out, though:
* The new Mitsume IDE-interface CD-ROM drives use a protocol called
`ATAPI,' which is apparently going to be a standard for
IDE-interface CD-ROM drives. Rumor is that NEC, Panasonic,
etc, will all be using this same protocol soon.
* I received email from one gentleman (whose name I didn't save,
sorry) who is (loosely) at work on a driver for FreeBSD.
Those two facts suggest that if (like me) you don't _really_ need
FreeBSD to access the CD-ROM drive, then the new Mitsumi drives may
not be a bad idea. There's reasonable odds that someone will
eventually release a driver for it. For now, I just copy stuff from
CD-ROM to hard disk using DOS <sigh>, and then access it on the hard
disk. Worked just fine for installing FreeBSD from CD-ROM.
Since my use of the CD-ROM will be almost exclusive to DOS/Windows
anyway, it seemed a reasonable choice for me. (Especially since it
was part of a computer bundle that otherwise fit my needs
perfectly. ;-)
- Tim Kientzle