Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!FRANK@utah-20 From: FRANK%utah-20@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: RA81 or RM05? Message-ID: <2958@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Sat, 9-Jul-83 21:33:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.2958 Posted: Sat Jul 9 21:33:00 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 13-Jul-83 06:11:24 EDT Lines: 25 From: Randy FrankHaving talked to both people and DEC and Berkeley about potential support for CI bus (HSC50) based disks, the comments can be summarized as follows: 1) writing a driver for a CI based disk is more akin to writing a networking system than writing a device driver. In particular, you have to implement a protocol called MSCP (mass storage control protocol) which is used over the CI bus. 2) it isn't a trivial job (i.e., don't expect one from DEC in the next few weeks). It's substantially harder that simply hacking an existing disk device driver for a "new" disk. 3) no one will commit that they actually are going to do it, but that clearly it is DEC's future architecture, so in most probability it will be done at some time in the future, but don't hold your breath. 4) (this one's my own interpretation) Ideally what DEC would like to do is have Unix and VMS co-exist on the same CI bus, hopefully sharing disk structures. Clearly this is an enormous project, but given DEC's planned support of Vax Unix is probably an intelligent thing to do. Whether or not it is even a reasonable thing to implement remains to be seen. -------