9fans archive / 1995 / 12 / 22 /    prev next

From: jim mckie  jmk@pla...
Subject: ATA driver/ATAPI CD/latest kernel
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 10:06:19 -0500

All the source changes for ATAPI have not been made available yet.
The kernel included in the current diskette set has some important
changes, you may want to try booting that 9dos to see if the problem
is fixed.

Often the MS-DOS/Windows drivers will leave the drive in a state
whereby it is difficult to recognise, it's best to try booting Plan9
straight after a reset without running anything else in between.

Every ATAPI drive I have tried (4 now) behaves in a different way.
Without doing a controller reset (which is dangerous in the presence
of mapped hard drives and not always implemented anyway) it seems
almost impossible to guarantee recognising an ATAPI drive. I wasted
a good part of yesterday trying to get a SANYO drive to work on a
Micron Powerstation, the drive refused to execute the 'execute device
diagnostics' command which is a mandatory command.