Matrix SLIDEWRITER and Suns

[Chris Johnson]

In article <2366 at brazos.Rice.edu> marka at natmlab.dms.oz.au writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 172, message 15 of 19
>
>We are looking at Matrix SLIDEWITER and was wondering if anyone has any
>experiance in connecting one to a Sun. In particular via the SCSI bus.
>
>The blurbs only seem to mention device drivers for Macs and I was
>wondering if anyone has already writen a device driver for it for either
>OS 3.x or 4.0?
>
>Any other device drivers for SCSI devices would also be useful if I have
>to write one myself.

Sun Consulting sells a generic high-level SCSI device driver example for
use with the standard issue Sun low-lever SCSI device driver.  It's called
the SIP (SCSI Intelligent Peripheral) driver.  Unless you have a source
code license, it may be the only way to get the information you need on
how to write your own driver.  Unless some other company/person who has
written one wants to share their source code with you.  Unfortunately, the
SIP driver is full of bugs, and the Sun SCSI device driver architecture is
a horrible tangled kludge.  From the looks of their new (for Sun OS 4.0.3x
/ Sparcstations) architecture called SCSA (Sun Common SCSI Architecture
*gag*), they've improved things a bit, but it is still unnecessarily
complicated and grossly inefficient.

It'd be a lot easier, and maybe even cheaper to go with a third party SCSI
host bus adapter, _if_ you have that option, that is, you've got a Sun
model with free VME slots available.

Good luck, whatever you do.  If you end up writing your own driver and
have questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them for you.  Or if you
go third party SCSI adapter, I can make some recommendations.

I'd even write the driver for you, for the right price, of course.

Chris Johnson                     UUCP:  chris at c2s.mn.org
Com Squared Systems, Inc.         ATT:  +1 612/452-9522