Magneto-Optical drive support in NEXTSTEP
Dino Bagdadi
I have a couple of questions regarding MO drives with NEXTSTEP. I checked
the FAQs but nothing was mentioned. Hopefully these questions (and any
answers) will make it to the NeXT Software/Hardware FAQs.
1. Is anyone out there using either the new 230 MB 3.5" or 1.3 Gb 5.25" MO
(magneto-optical) drives?
2. If so, which brand(s)?
3. Was it plug-n-play, or did you have to mess around with mtabs to get
them mounted?
Any answers will be appreciated. I will post a summary for the benefit of
all.
Thanks.
---
Dino Bagdadi
Blackmaus Design
305.935.6325
di...@blackmaus.com (NeXT email expected!)
PGP key available on request.
--
Dino Bagdadi
Blackmaus Design
305.935.6325
Jessica Hayden
> Hello,
>
> I have a couple of questions regarding MO drives with NEXTSTEP. I checked
> the FAQs but nothing was mentioned. Hopefully these questions (and any
> answers) will make it to the NeXT Software/Hardware FAQs.
>
> 1. Is anyone out there using either the new 230 MB 3.5" or 1.3 Gb 5.25" MO
> (magneto-optical) drives?
>
> 2. If so, which brand(s)?
>
Yes we have a Pinnacle Micro Sierra 1.3GB MO drive attached to a NextStation
TurboColor.
> 3. Was it plug-n-play, or did you have to mess around with mtabs to get
> them mounted?
No it was not plug-n-play at all! It took a long time to finally get some
disktabs to get some cartridges to format and work properly. I'm pretty
satisfied with it right now though. It's been in use by several people in our
lab for over a month with only one problem (they ejected it with the eject
button on the drive instead of from the workspace so the cartridge needed to be
fscked, I can't figure out how to lock the drive so that the eject button does
not function but I believe there is a low level scsi command to do just that
because the mac driver can prevent accidental ejects).
I've been meaning to post the disktabs but I wanted to wait to make sure they
worked. So I guess this is as good a time as any.
Note that the disktab entry for the 512byte/sector 1.2GB cartridges is based
primarily from a sun /etc/format.dat that was faxed to me by an engineer at
pinacle. The entry for the 1024byte/sector 1.3GB cartridges is based on an
HPUX disktab emailed to me over the net. I also used NextAnswers docs 1533 for
a template for the rest of the disktab entry.
I was unable to get the cartridges to format with ty=removable_rw_optical but
they did work with ty=removable_rw_scsi. I haven't figured that out yet. The
only problem with this is that they appear with an ugly SCSI icon instead of
the nice optical icon on automount in the workspcae. I fixed this by going
into /usr/lib/NextStep/Workspace.app/WM.app, renamed scsi.tiff to OLDscsi.tiff
and openScsi.tiff to OLDopenScsi.tiff, and then copied optical.tiff and
openOptical.tiff to scsi.tiff and openScsi.tiff. So now autoMount disks of
type removable_rw_scsi appear on the Workspace with the optical tiff.
I've tuned the disktab for space optimization instead of speed since we
primarily use our optical more like a WORM so there should be very little
fragmentation.
The disktab works with the Workspace auto-initialize routines, except that it
can't determine whether the cartridge is 512byte/sector or 1024byte/sector.
I've set our's up to auto-initialize properly for the 1024byte/sector disks,
and require a command line format for 512byte/sector disks with:
disk -t PINNACLEOHD-1200 -i /dev/rsd1a
Add these line to /etc/disktab after the cannon OM entry
# Pinnacle Micro Sierra optical disk drive
# ECMA 512 byte/sector media
# Disktab generated by Jessica Hayden from SunOS /etc/format.dat entry
# and NextAnswers document 1533.
PINNACLEOHD-1200|Pinnacle Sierra 1.2GB OHD:\
:ty=removable_rw_scsi:nc#5359:nt#7:ns#31:ss#512:rm#3600:\
:fp#320:bp#256:ng#0:gs#0:ga#0:ao#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#64:z1#192:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#1162903:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#32:da#4096:ra#1:oa=space:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:aa:
# Pinnacle Micro Sierra optical disk drive
# ECMA 1024 byte/sector media
# Disktab generated by Kelley Wittmeyer & Jessica Hayden from
# an HPUX /etc/disktab entry and NextAnswers doc 1533
PINNACLEOHD-1300|Pinnacle Sierra 1.3GB OHD:\
:ty=removable_rw_scsi:nc#1171:nt#32:ns#17:ss#1024:rm#3600:\
:fp#160:bp#256:ng#0:gs#0:ga#0:ao#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#32:z1#96:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#636608:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#8:da#4096:ra#0:oa=space:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:aa:
I've also written a program to mount an optical cartridge from another machine
on the network, NFS export the cartrdge, and NFS mount it on the remote
machine. It bypasses automount and eject so you don't have to login to the
machine with the optical drive in order to use it remotely. It's just getting
stable and if there is interest I can release it in the PD.
I hope this ends up in the FAQ too :)
Jessica Hayden
Dept Chemistry
University of Wisconsin-Madison
hay...@drumlin.chem.wisc.edu
Jessica Hayden
> Yes we have a Pinnacle Micro Sierra 1.3GB MO drive attached to a NextStation
> TurboColor.
there are a couple more things I'd like to add. The Pinnacle Sierra is a very
fast drive with a 19ms access time and an ability to spin at 4500RPM with high
quality glass cartridges that Pinnacle sells for ~$200 a piece. We have been
using Verbatim 1.3GB 1024byte/sector cartridges with the drive (~$120 each from
ClubMac) with still very good performance. The drive feels about twice as slow
as our hard drives.
I believe the Sierra has a several MB cache onboard. The older Pinnacle
PMO-650 had a 4MB cache and the Sierra replaced that drive.
Here are some sample specs. Using the /etc/disk command....
disk> read
starting block? 1
# sectors per transfer? 128
number of transfers? 10
sector increment? 1
1310720 bytes in 614 ms = 2148721 bytes/s
(2.1 MB/sec reads)
disk> write
starting block? 1
# sectors per transfer? 128
number of transfers? 10
sector increment? 1
random data? yes
1310720 bytes in 622 ms = 2114064 bytes/s
(2.1 MB/sec write)
(FYI on our 486/66 NS/Intel adaptec 1542cf/Seagate ST3600N we only get
1.3MB/sec for the same /etc/disk read test).
We ordered the Mac version of the drive (which came with the Sierra with a SCSI
port, mac system SCSI cable, manual and mac driver/utility disk). We were
having some problems with some sort of SCSI noise which was fixed by placing
the drive as the first physical device on the external chain and having the
rest of the external SCSI devices after the Sierra. We originally had the
Sierra at the end of the SCSI chain. The drive is a SCSI-2 device and there
may have been some problems with improper SCSI-2 syncronization over the longer
cable length.
We paid $2845 educational for the drive back in April which is slightly more
than average but I believe it was worth it for the speed advantage.
One last thing, the drive comes in a really cool looking two tone gray case
with green accents. It looks more like something you'd find in a modern art
museum than from a disk drive manufacturer. I sometimes think that was the real
reason I picked it over the others :)
Hope this answers any further questions.
Jessica Hayden
Marc Salvatori
: In article <32udil$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu> hay...@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu
: > Yes we have a Pinnacle Micro Sierra 1.3GB MO drive attached to a NextStation
: > TurboColor.
: We ordered the Mac version of the drive (which came with the Sierra with a SCSI
: port, mac system SCSI cable, manual and mac driver/utility disk).
: The drive is a SCSI-2 device
Was the SCSI-2 driver enough to talk to this drive? Or did you have
to include the mac driver as well? Or perhaps as a replacement? I've
been hearing good things about MO drives lately, but have heard
literally nothing about NS compatibility. An additional feature that
I have yet to hear is that such a drive can also connect via parallel
port(understandably with slower throughput) so that I could also use
it on non-SCSI systems.
: One last thing, the drive comes in a really cool looking two tone gray case
: with green accents. It looks more like something you'd find in a modern art
: museum than from a disk drive manufacturer. I sometimes think that was the real
: reason I picked it over the others :)
I agree, Jessica, that it is one beautiful unit. I wish I could afford one.
But alas, I'll have to settle for a 230M.
--
>< Marc J. Salvatori | Preparing to drop DOS for NextStep ><
>< sa...@eskimo.com | Ultimately in search of fine object-oriented tools ><
Hal Varian
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a couple of questions regarding MO drives with NEXTSTEP. I checked
>> the FAQs but nothing was mentioned. Hopefully these questions (and any
>> answers) will make it to the NeXT Software/Hardware FAQs.
>>
>> 1. Is anyone out there using either the new 230 MB 3.5" or 1.3 Gb 5.25" MO
>> (magneto-optical) drives?
>>
>> 2. If so, which brand(s)?
>>
I just saw an ad for a CSC optical disk drives. They have a 650 MB
unit for $695 that they indicate works with a NeXT. Is anybody
out there in netland using this drive? What have your experiences
been? This looks pretty tempting. [CSC is in Sunnyvale at
408-734-DISK].
--
---
Hal.V...@umich.edu Hal Varian
voice: 313-764-2364 Dept of Economics
fax: 313-764-2364 Univ of Michigan
Jessica Hayden
> Was the SCSI-2 driver enough to talk to this drive? Or did you have
> to include the mac driver as well? Or perhaps as a replacement? I've
> been hearing good things about MO drives lately, but have heard
> literally nothing about NS compatibility. An additional feature that
> I have yet to hear is that such a drive can also connect via parallel
> port(understandably with slower throughput) so that I could also use
> it on non-SCSI systems.
>
Outside of the SCSI cabling problem I mentioned, the standard NextStep SCSI
drivers worked with the drive. That's one of the nice things about SCSI. I
also tried it on a NS/Intel machine with an Adaptec 1542cf and it worked fine
there too.
I don't know about using a parallel port. The drive that was shipped to us
only had the SCSI ports. In fact the Dos version of the Sierra package is the
same drive shipped with an adaptec SCSI card and drivers (as opposed to a
special PC bus version like most Dos CD-ROM drives). I suspect most if not all
Magneto-Optical drives are SCSI devices.
Jessica Hayden
Jessica Hayden
> to include the mac driver as well? Or perhaps as a replacement? I've
> been hearing good things about MO drives lately, but have heard
> literally nothing about NS compatibility. An additional feature that
> I have yet to hear is that such a drive can also connect via parallel
> port(understandably with slower throughput) so that I could also use
> it on non-SCSI systems.
>
Outside of the SCSI cabling problem I mentioned, the standard NextStep SCSI
drivers worked with the drive. That's one of the nice things about SCSI,
devices are grouped into types (hardDrive, OpticalDrive, TapeDrive...) and each
drive manufacturer makes there SCSI device conform to a SCSI type. So the same
SCSI hardDrive driver will work for all SCSI hardrives (unless the manufacture
messed up on matching the SCSI spec). The latest Byte magazine has an
interesting article on SCSI buses for anyone who is interested. I also tried
the Sierra on a NS/Intel machine with an Adaptec 1542cf and it worked fine
Jessica Hayden
> to include the mac driver as well? Or perhaps as a replacement? I've
> been hearing good things about MO drives lately, but have heard
> literally nothing about NS compatibility. An additional feature that
> I have yet to hear is that such a drive can also connect via parallel
> port(understandably with slower throughput) so that I could also use
> it on non-SCSI systems.
>
Outside of the SCSI cabling problem I mentioned, the standard NextStep SCSI