FC2 and tape drives.

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Juan Pablo Claude wrote:
> Kevin:
> 
> Thank you for your quick reply. Yes, I have been to the how-To web site, 
> and I agree that the Iomega drive should be supported. The trick is that 
> both drives use different interfaces. The T3000 is FDC, whereas the 
> Iomega has its accelerator card. So, I have to compile the ftape module 
> for one or the other.

Not really, you can put both drives on the accelerater card if 
necessary.  The accelerater card should be little more than a 2.88MB 
floppy controller (capable of 1Mbps instead of the standard 500kbps 
regular floppy controller).  You still have to worry about how to 
differentiate them.  Make sure that the cable on your accelerator card 
has the appropriate "twist" in it to "swap" the devices and you should 
be all set.

> However, this web site: http://www.linuxtapecert.org/index.html, 
> indicates that the ftape module supports four devices, and they mix an 

Well, there *are* 4 device ID lines on the standard floppy drive cable. 
  The fact that IBM only chose to support 2 of them in its BIOS way back 
when, and to do it with a "twist" in the cable between the first and 
second drive connector, has nothing to do with what the ftape controller 
will support.  But, it *has* to be able to access each device via a 
unique device select line on the cable.  How you acheive that is up to 
you (custom cables with the appropriate twists, or jumper the tape drives).

> internal drive and a parallel port Ditto drive, as:
> 
> insmod ./ftape.o ft_fdc_driver=ftape-internal,bpck-fdc,none,none 
> ft_tracings=3,3,0,0,3
> 
> The problem is that that is as far as the information goes. Perhaps, 

I guess the authors assumed you have the same knowledge of the floppy 
drive interface as they do.  B^{

> what I could do is connect the T3000 FDC drive to the Iomega accelerator 
> card too, as it is supposed to support a floppy drive too. Thanks again.

Yeup, that's the general idea.  Good Luck!

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us