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Author Topic: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?  (Read 6011 times)

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Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« on: October 12, 2014, 08:49:38 PM »
I have stacks of Amiga SCSI drives that I'd like to read/write on my MorphOS machine, but no old LSI SCSI cards that are listed on the compatibility list.

I do have quite a few different Adaptec UW 160 and 320 cards, so I'm thinking of writing a driver for them.

I've already found a good example Promise SATA driver, so I think I can handle writing the MorphOS side and I've tested that Linux on my Powermac can use my PC Adaptec cards, so I don't see why MorphOS couldn't use them. Booting from SCSI isn't really a concern for me, I'd rather use SATA from my main drives.

I'm probably going to base the driver off of NetBSD though, I like how their drivers are written.

Is this interesting to anyone else or just to me? Either way I'm doing it for the fun/learning experience, but I'm just curious.

BTW, I don't have a Promise card to test with that driver from Aminet. Does it work?
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2014, 09:16:30 PM »
Go for it! Anything that helps NG users get their SCSI peripherals working on the newer machines is sure to be useful. I don't have a PCI-capable MorphOS machine at the moment, but I'm sure I will someday and I will definitely want to put SCSI in it for compatibility purposes.
 

Offline amigadave

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Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2014, 09:43:07 PM »
Quote from: Heiroglyph;774889
I have stacks of Amiga SCSI drives that I'd like to read/write on my MorphOS machine, but no old LSI SCSI cards that are listed on the compatibility list.

I do have quite a few different Adaptec UW 160 and 320 cards, so I'm thinking of writing a driver for them.

I've already found a good example Promise SATA driver, so I think I can handle writing the MorphOS side and I've tested that Linux on my Powermac can use my PC Adaptec cards, so I don't see why MorphOS couldn't use them. Booting from SCSI isn't really a concern for me, I'd rather use SATA from my main drives.

I'm probably going to base the driver off of NetBSD though, I like how their drivers are written.

Is this interesting to anyone else or just to me? Either way I'm doing it for the fun/learning experience, but I'm just curious.

BTW, I don't have a Promise card to test with that driver from Aminet. Does it work?

I also have stacks of old SCSI hdd's and a few SCSI ZIP & JAZ removable drives (both internal and external), and would like to be able to use some of them on my G4 PowerMac if I had an SCSI host adapter card that worked with MorphOS.

Most people will probably say that it is a waste of your time, but if you think you can do it in a reasonable length of time and you can benefit from the driver yourself, I say go for it.  There will be a few people like me who will also appreciate your efforts.:)
How are you helping the Amiga community? :)
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2014, 10:33:57 PM »
Quote from: amigadave;774893
I also have stacks of old SCSI hdd's and a few SCSI ZIP & JAZ removable drives (both internal and external), and would like to be able to use some of them on my G4 PowerMac if I had an SCSI host adapter card that worked with MorphOS.

Most people will probably say that it is a waste of your time, but if you think you can do it in a reasonable length of time and you can benefit from the driver yourself, I say go for it.  There will be a few people like me who will also appreciate your efforts.:)


I just like making stuff and it keeps me from working at home.

My plan is:
1. SCSI driver
2. FUSE Flyer filesystem
3. VTASC codec (for Flyer clips)
4. ???
5. No Profit!
 

Offline nicholas

Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2014, 12:59:33 PM »
That would be great, I've got plenty of Adaptec but cards but no LSI Logic ones so can't use my SCSI stuff on my G5.
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2014, 05:22:47 PM »
Quote from: Heiroglyph;774899
I just like making stuff and it keeps me from working at home.

My plan is:
1. SCSI driver
2. FUSE Flyer filesystem
3. VTASC codec (for Flyer clips)
4. ???
5. No Profit!


There might even be some commercial value in those Flyer tools. I could see TV studios or such wanting to transfer archival footage from Flyer hard drives to a modern format and media. Even if it's not high-def, better for them to do the transfer digitally than over the Flyer's composite output... if they even still have working Amigas. And then there's weirdos like us who would use the codec to convert modern videos TO the Flyer format :)
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2014, 05:31:32 PM »
Quote from: nicholas;774922
That would be great, I've got plenty of Adaptec but cards but no LSI Logic ones so can't use my SCSI stuff on my G5.


Would you be willing to test when I get far enough? What cards do you have?

Adpatec always seemed way more common to me too. I've got one LSI card, but it's way too new for the Symbios drivers in MorphOS.

I've got part of the driver working already. It's detecting and attaching, but none of the chip is initialized yet.

If I wasn't screwing around with dual monitors so long, I might have more done by now.
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2014, 05:47:21 PM »
Quote from: Matt_H;774938
There might even be some commercial value in those Flyer tools. I could see TV studios or such wanting to transfer archival footage from Flyer hard drives to a modern format and media. Even if it's not high-def, better for them to do the transfer digitally than over the Flyer's composite output... if they even still have working Amigas. And then there's weirdos like us who would use the codec to convert modern videos TO the Flyer format :)


I figure this will only be useful to us. I probably can't legally sell it anyway, conflict of interest with internal knowledge and all.

We still have the Bigfoot utility on the NewTek FTP and I actually used that at least as recently as Windows XP, so getting the files off has been possible for a while.

As far as reading the files, I think Aura was the last thing with an accessible importer. VT 2-4 and some TriCasters had some very minor support, but I don't think it was accessible through the UI. I never used it on VT or TriCaster, but I know the codec was built into it.

The Flyer filesystem itself might actually be useful beyond just reading Flyer drives. It can handle massive file and partition sizes. I'm not yet aware of what the limitations are, but I've had Flyer partitions that were larger than 128GB and single files that were way over 4GB.
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2014, 02:57:50 AM »
Ah, yes, I keep forgetting you're a NewTek guy! So much for the commercial possibilities, but it's good to know there exist(ed) other means of retrieving Flyer files for interested clients.

How much of the Flyer filesystem is tied to the Flyer hardware? Can one plug a Flyer drive into a regular SCSI controller and use the filesystem to access it?
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2014, 03:52:39 AM »
Quote from: Matt_H;774997

How much of the Flyer filesystem is tied to the Flyer hardware? Can one plug a Flyer drive into a regular SCSI controller and use the filesystem to access it?


Nothing is tied to the card, you can access them from Windows if you get the utility from our ftp site. (unsupported, don't call tech about it)

http://ftp.newtek.com/pub/VideoToasterAmiga/BigFoot/BigFoot.zip

I haven't tried that in a while, but it worked on XP at least.

It doesn't mount the drive with a drive letter, it just lets you copy files to and from the drive.

BTW, don't let Windows write anything to the drive or else you will lose data.
 

Offline esc

Re: Anybody using (or want) SCSI?
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2014, 07:02:51 AM »
Your stack of SCSI drives...are they 50 pin drives? Decent amount of storage capacity? I have a blizzard scsi mk iv that I'd like to use. :)

Sorry for O/T question!