It been awhile since the last major update, as a benefit there
are some cool things in this one (and new bugs probably :) )...
The ATA driver has grown "real" timeout support for all devices.
This means that it should be possible to get in contact with
(especially) lost ATAPI devices. It also means that the ATA
driver is now usable on notebooks as it will DTRT on resume.
An experimental hack at utilizing the Promise66's at UDMA66 is
in there, but I cant test it. If someone feels like sending
me one, give me a ping.
The ATAPI DMA enableling scheme has been changed, also better DMA
support for the Aladdin chipset has been implemented for ATAPI
devices. Note that the Aladdin apparently only can do DMA reads
on ATAPI devices, and the Promise cant do ATAPI DMA at all.
I have seen problems on some ATAPI devices that should be able
to run in DMA mode, so if you encounter problems with hanging
atapi devices during the probe, or during access, disable DMA
in atapi-all.c, and let me know. It might be nessesary to do this
via a "white list" for known good devices...
The ATAPI CDROM driver can now use eject/close without hanging and
the bug that caused reading beyond the end of a CD has been fixed.
Media change is also handled proberly. DVD drives are identified
and are usable as CDROM devices at least, I dont have the HW to
test this further, see above :).
The ATAPI tape driver has gotten some support for using the DSC
method for not blocking the IDE channel during read/write when
the device has full buffers. It knows about the OnStream DI-30
device, support is not completed yet, but it can function as a
primitive backup medium, without filemarks, and without bad media
handeling. This is because the OnStream device doesn't handle this
(like everybody else) in HW. It also now supports getting/setting
the record position on devices that supports it.
Some rather major cleanups and rearrangements as well (cvs -b diff
is your freind). I'm closing in on declaring this for beta code,
most of the infrastruture is in place by now.
As usual USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!, this is still alpha level code.
This driver can hose your disk real bad if anything goes wrong, but
now you have been warned :)
But please tell me how it works for you!
Enjoy!
-Søren
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