To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Subject: IDE/ATAPI in 2.5
Date: 11 Jul 2002 17:27:11 -0700
Organization: Transmeta Corporation, Santa Clara CA
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Okay, I have suggested this before, and I haven't quite looked at this
in detail, but I would again like to consider the following,
especially given the changes in 2.5:

Please consider deprecating or removing ide-floppy/ide-tape/ide-cdrom
and treat all ATAPI devices as what they really are -- SCSI over IDE.
It is a source of no ending confusion that a Linux system will not
write CDs to an IDE CD-writer out of the box, for the simple reason
that cdrecord needs access to the generic packet interface, which is
only available in the nonstandard ide-scsi configuration.

There really seems to be no decent reason to treat ATAPI devices as
anything else.  I understand the ide-* drivers contain some
workarounds for specific devices, but those really should be moved to
their respective SCSI drivers anyway -- after all, manufacturers
readily slap IDE or SCSI interfaces on the same devices anyway.

Note that this is specific to ATAPI devices.  ATA hard drives are
another matter entirely.

	-hpa

-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt	<amsp@zytor.com>
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