On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 11:49:32PM +0200, Lourens Veen wrote:
> I think I know why too. UNIX has traditionally been used on large
> machines, servers and mainframes, not on consumer-grade PCs. Those
> big machines don't have IDE. The low end has SCSI, and maybe the
> high end too I don't know, but at least it's not IDE.
Older HP workstations are pure SCSI. Newer ones (e.g. B2000 and B2600)
have SCSI hard drives, but IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives. But the CD-ROM
is still presented as if it were SCSI:
# uname -a
HP-UX imadev B.10.20 A 9000/785 2008xxxxxx two-user license
# ioscan -fn -C disk
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
=======================================================================
disk 0 10/0/14/0.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE MITSUMI CD-ROM FX4830T!B
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0
disk 1 10/0/15/0.6.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE QUANTUM ATLAS5-9LVD
/dev/dsk/c2t6d0 /dev/rdsk/c2t6d0
That Mitsumi drive is really IDE, but the kernel is presenting it as
SCSI disk (0,0,0). (c0t0d0 = controller 0 target 0 LUN 0.)
Now, keep in mind that HP-UX 10.20 is so old that HP isn't even
supporting it any more (yet it's still in widespread use). (According to
http://www.software.hp.com/RELEASES-MEDIA/history/slide2.html , it was
introduced in 8/96 and became "obsolete" 6/30/03.) IDE-SCSI emulation has
been the standard way to handle newer CD-ROM drives on Unix for a *very*
long time.
I'm no kernel hacker, so I won't criticize what the Linux team is doing.
I just want things to work as well and as easily as possible. It seems
that IDE-SCSI emulation is the way most Unix systems achieve that.
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