Re: possible SCSI device numbering solution

Bryn Paul Arnold Jones (bpaj@gytha.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 25 Jun 1996 11:38:47 +0100 (BST)


On Tue, 25 Jun 1996, Andrew E. Mileski wrote:

> > There is little point going through the disruption that changing it would
> > be, to change it again, so we may as well go to a 64 bit dev_t. One
> > thing tho, would we even need more than 65536 major devices? ie 16 bit
> > major, 48 bit minor (or 281474976710656 minor numbers (2.8*10^14) ;)
>
> I'm reminded of somebody saying, "they'll never need more than 640k". :-/
>

But then we got graphics, and windows .... You can still run a dos wp in
640k, on a 086 (you _can_ run word 2 (could be word 1) in windows 3.0 on
an 086, but it takes a week to start up;) ....

> But anyhoot, 16/48 bit majors/minors seems reasonable to me.
> Of course, this is a blind guess - we really should discuss how
> majors/minors will be assigned and used first. We could easily gobble up
> 128-bits with a poor system, or, improve the current one and stick with
> 16-bits.
>

True, wasting 48bits of minors could be done, but I think that it will be
a very long time before we have 16bit's of majors (the way we're using
them now, it will be a very, very long time).

> --
> Andrew E. Mileski
Bryn

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