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From: j@bonnie.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: rft0 not configured -- for /dev/ft0 (qic-80)
Date: 23 Aug 1995 16:04:07 +0200
Organization: Private U**x site, Dresden.
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References: <417ls1$8u1@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> <41cjrn$1nb@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <41dfm6$1v7@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
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Sean Emery <emerys@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>>... As long as the driver didn't find it there,
>>you don't have a chance later.
>
>Okay, that seems to be the big problem. I've compared floppy kernel
>configurations with someone else and they are the same as GENERIC. I
>am unsure if I have to play around with the jumper settings on the back
>of the drive. Checking into that as soon as I get home. . .
The author(s) of the ft driver appear to be flooded with other work,
so the FreeBSD ft driver is almost orphaned. Most of the other
developers wouldn't even bother to think of a floppy tape (and even
the FreeBSD maintainer doesn't recommend using them). This explains
why it's not among the best-supported parts of the systems
(unfortunately). It appears to work for those drives where someone
has put a substantial amount of work into the driver to get it going,
but there are 1001 types of floppy tapes around...
>... If nothing happens with altered jumper settings, I
>will return the drive and save up for SCSI.
If you can afford this, it will always be the better choice. SCSI
tape drives do much pre/postprocessing of their own, while the CPU
will have to do this for floppy tapes. For SCSI, you simply see a
block of data coming out of the SCSI target, and you don't have to
care whether just this one has been ECC-corrected or whatnot.
And you don't have to format the tapes.
--
cheers, J"org private: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
http://www.sax.de/~joerg/
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)