[H-GEN] USB on Linux

[Paul Gearon]

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On Sun, 14 Apr 2002, Frank Brand wrote:

> Probably enuff controversy for today but, for the life of me, I cant
> understand the necessity for all the SCSI stuff....Windows sorted out IDE
> and USB ages ago...Linux knows about IDE drives and USB gear.
>
> Why do we need to kid that the CD Burner is a SCSI drive?
>
> MMMM another world...the majority of computer users dont even know what SCSI
> is, then for others its all there is.

OK, I know that Chris has already mentioned this, but I can't help adding
in my 2c.

As Chris said, SCSI is needed by all these devices because they all
implement the SCSI command set (or a part thereof).  How do you burn to an
IDE CDRW drive?  You send it the same SCSI commands that you send to a
SCSI CDRW drive.

...and no, Windows has NOT overcome this.  Look up the SCSI adapters in
Windows NT, and you'll find your ATAPI devices (95, 98 and Me hide it in a
different place, but it's there).  While looking for hints on the
operation of my ThumbDrive I went looking in the driver file, and I saw
the following symbols (among others):
  ScsiPortInitialize
  ScsiPortNotification
  ScsiPortMoveMemory
  SCSIPORT.SYS

So no, we're not "kidding" when we call the CD burner a SCSI drive.

I do agree that you shouldn't need to know how to configure this stuff.
The average user hasn't even heard of SCSI.  However, I was under the
impression that the major dists include all available modules by default,
so the average user should have this already available (that's the
distributors problem if they don't - certainly the last RH dist I saw
seemed to have every kernel module known to man included in the
/lib/modules/ver/ directories).

Admittedly, those users who don't know SCSI, but want to compile a kernel
will have problems, but fortunately the new kernel configuration stuff in
the 2.5.x kernels should pick up the SCSI dependencies of anything you
select, and include it for you.

Regards,
Paul Gearon

Software Engineer                Telephone:   +61 7 3876 2188
Plugged In Software              Fax:         +61 7 3876 4899
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