Mike A. Harris writes:
> On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Steve VanDevender wrote:
> >Oh please. The point of a standard protocol is to make it possible to
> >interchange devices from any number of manufacturers on the same
> >interface. That way the kernel need have only a SCSI driver, not a
> >Brand X SCSI driver, a Brand Y SCSI driver, a Brand Z SCSI driver, ad
> >infinitum. We should have standard drivers to support standard
> >protocols, not a huge mess of drivers for all sorts of nonstandard
> >hardware.
>
> Thats right. I agree with that completely. You put a layer of
> abstraction in so FEATURE_1 maps to vendor 1's proprietary
> command for feature 1, and FEATURE_1 maps to vendor 2's
> proprietary and different command, etc..
>
> 1 driver that supports multiple hardware. NOT multiple drivers.
You're still missing the point. One driver supports a whole lot of
hardware because the hardware conforms to a standard interface, and NOT
because the driver contains a whole lot of special-casing to deal with
quirks of different hardware. You don't need a stupid mapping of
proprietary methods of doing the same thing; that's the point of having
a standard. We just don't need to have multiple instances of the SCSI
driver for different brands of disks; if it's a SCSI disk, then it
should conform to the SCSI standard, and the standard SCSI driver will
be able to use it without any special-casing.
If the hardware tries to pervert the standard by adding a lot of
proprietary features to its interface, or in particular tries to require
the proprietary features for basic access to the hardware, then it's not
standard hardware.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 31 2000 - 21:00:15 EST