Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!oliveb!pyramid!voder!apple!alan From: alan@Apple.COM (Alan Mimms) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: defaults in hierarchical menus Keywords: hierarchical menus Message-ID: <13975@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 14 Jul 88 23:39:14 GMT References: <5969@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <391@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> Reply-To: alan@apple.apple.com.UUCP (Alan Mimms) Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA Lines: 57 % From coherent.com!dplatt Thu Jul 14 10:31:23 1988 % Subject: Aha... things are becoming clearer... % % I poked around a bit in the Micah Installer and the driver last night, % and I think I see what's going on. Micah appears to be using the % _Status trap to retrieve specified pieces of the sense-information % recorded by an earlier I/O operation. Checking for bad sectors during % the init/test cycle, perhaps? At least, that appears to be what's % occurring... % % This would have worked fine under 5.0 and earlier releases; Apple had % never specified the _Status interface for the SCSI driver (as you % determined, the sample driver doesn't implement it at all) and IM says % that the codes and results for _Status are driver-specific. From what I % can see, Micah was free to use _Status in the way they did; they were % breaking none of the Apple rules. % % Then, in 6.0, Apple decided to define a new use for _Status that was % incompatible with Micah's use of _Status... in effect, Apple entirely % preempted _Status csCode=6, and wrote code that depended on the new % interpretation. Based on what you've told me, and on what I've heard % from others, it sounds as if this was done with no advanced notice to % outside developers. In effect, Apple added device-dependent code to % Disk First Aid and the disk-init package. % % I rather imagine that somebody at Apple is being, or will soon be % roasted over a slow fire for this. It's yet one more indication that % System 6.0 was pushed out the door too fast and with too little % third-party verification and testing. Sigh... even Apple isn't immune % to those time-pressures, I guess. % % -dave- I've been conversing with David Platt (who is a Macintosh developer) and have been trying to help him determine the problem he's having with his hard disk. Apparently, several hard disk manufacturers have used the _Status call to do things in a perfectly reasonable fashion. Unfortunately, Apple has shot them in the foot. I know that we'll probably say we're sorry, but that doesn't help the people who have hard disk with broken drivers. Can we somehow help these people get their systems upgraded to System Software 6.0? alan Alan Mimms My opinions are generally Communications Products Group pretty worthless, but Apple Computer they *are* my own... ...it's so simple that only a child can do it! -- Tom Lehrer, "New Math" PS: Note that this is only being posted within the Apple campus. Alan Mimms My opinions are generally Communications Products Group pretty worthless, but Apple Computer they *are* my own... ...it's so simple that only a child can do it! -- Tom Lehrer, "New Math"