Re: Request for help with cdrecord and HP7100

Grant R. Guenther (grant@torque.net)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 07:20:16 -0500 (EST)


> Off topic: is there any plan (or work-in-progress) to have the
> similar of ide-scsi for paride? What else is needed to support
> parallel port cd-writers (like the HP7100e).

I seem to have been dragged into the middle of an ongoing discussion
about something else :-)

My current plan for the HP 7100e is to write a high-level 'pg' driver
for the PARIDE suite.

PARIDE is a suite of low-level protocol modules, for each of a dozen or
so different parallel port IDE adapters on the market, and high-level
drivers for IDE disks, ATAPI disks, ATAPI CD-ROMs and ATAPI tapes
connected via the adapters. It is available in recent 2.1 kernels.

The HP 7100e is the same mechanism as the internal 7100, with an
integrated 'EPAT' adapter from Shuttle Technology. It is known to
work as a CD-ROM with PARIDE, but the CD-R and CD-RW functionality
requires a suitable interface.

I believe the way to do this is to implement the same user interface as
is provided by the SCSI generic drivers, but I see no reason to do this
via the SCSI sg driver, mid-level driver, and a scsi-ide emulator.

This mail, however, seems to suggest that there are some on-going
issues with the design of the generic interface, and with some
incompatibilities between the SCSI and ATAPI command sets, and that
these incompatibilities are being hidden in the device drivers.

Can someone (Gadi ?) please fill me in on the essence of these issues.

Pointers to documentation on the differences between the command
sets would also be useful.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grant R. Guenther grant@torque.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------