[TU81 drivers] UNIX-WIZARDS Digest V2#062

[Chris Torek]

In article <2128 at brl-tgr.ARPA> MRC%PANDA at sumex-aim.arpa writes:
> I don't see what is so hard about writing a device driver for the
> TU81.  Tape drives are tape drives.

You obviously have not seen MSCP yet.  Tape drives are disks connected
via a virtual circuit network :-).

> A good hacker should be able to knock off a nerdly tape drive device
> driver in a day or so, and a good (fully compatible) one in a week
> at most.

*If* you have manuals.  Without knowing which device registers to
poke, with which values, and without circuit diagrams and microcode
listings and all, it can take a LONG time to figure out how ANYTHING
works.

Speaking of which . . . does anyone have an order number for a TU81
programmer's manual?  As long as I am rewriting the UDA50 driver
I would like to write some generic MSCP device routines; it would
help if I knew which MSCP things were truly generic.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1415)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu