Hi Eric, I think this was a reply to my post, but you didn't include original text so it's hard to see, anyway answers in line.
Hi, I think by "as if they were IDE drives", you mean that there is INT13 support. Actually INT13 is the only cached interface. The others may be present at the same time, but the cache does not touch them. DOS does not normally use them either, unless you use a driver like ASPIDISK to create a drive letter for some SCSI/ASPI-only disk which has no INT13 support.
Ok that's interesting! Yes, it must be INT13 that causes them to appear "as if they are IDE drives". I never really understood this until now. The thing I like about SCSI, is that you turn these things on or off, whereas with IDE you're stuck with what you've got.
Funny that you write that it is GOOD that a good RAID controller looks like a single disk to the system while at the same time you write that it is GOOD that Windows uses it's own drivers instead of the ones provided with the hardware (e.g. in the BIOS)...
Well I see it as two SEPARATE things. The RAID array (container) looks like a single logical drive regardless of o/s - that means everything works even if you've got no operating system or drivers. Contrast this with "software RAID" where anything could happen.. Regarding the second part of your sentence, I don't think that's what I said? I was saying BIOS support is very usful WHILE INSTALLING WINDOWS because you don't have all the convoluted text mode drivers to worry about. I then said that ONCE WINDOWS IS INSTALLED, it uses the PnP drivers and you don't have to worry about BIOS support anymore. Actually, I think Windows is a bit of a mess during the text mode portion of setup. If Windows was better designed, BIOS support of SCSI drives would not be so important.
Anyway, you did not really make a statement about whether and when SATA or RAID systems need the TUNS option...
That's because I'm totally new to FreeDOS and have only used SATA twice. I've been using RAID for years, but I'm not about to risk my arrays by turning off TUNS!
TUNS is meant for SCSI systems, but again, LBACACHE always uses the INT13 interface.
Hmmm, I wonder if LBACACHE should be able to talk via the driver instead (as on option?) How does it work with SMARTDRV?
It is only that the INT13 interface somehow requires the stack to be in low memory (reason unknown) if INT13 services are provided by a SCSI BIOS.
Right, this is the super-advanced-developers-only bit, and unfortunately I have no idea. I'm just a user. I wonder again how it works with SMARTDRV which appears to be able to use SOME UMBs but let's face it, it's no match for LBACACHE.
My idea was that SATA or RAID could also have their own specific BIOS extensions which might as well need the TUNS option. But as I do not have such hardware, I cannot tell. Asking the users out there to tell me, for that reason.
The problem for me, is that I have to build the servers very quickly and we don't have spare ones lying around, not to mention the amount of time it would take to test for data corruption. I guess it would be quick to test for timeouts? I'm also worried that if I fire up LBACACHE without TUNS on a working system, it might trash the data on all the partitions? -- Gerry Hickman (London UK) ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
