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On Wed, 16 May 2001 09:26:17 +0200, Gilles Molli� wrote:
>One little question.
>It's difficult to me to understand why the ATA/ATAPI standard tells
>so few things about CD-ROM/DVD-ROM than SFF8070 (dedicated
>rewritable devices) and SFF8090 (more for DVD).
ATA/ATAPI-x only describes the transport layer for ATAPI. Remember
that ATAPI devices are SCSI or SCSI-like devices and the SCSI or
SCSI-like command sets implemented by ATAPI devices is described in
other documents, usually in documents published by T10.
>When reading SFF8070 they refer to ATA/ATAPI-4, and they say they
>are compliant with this standard. What about ATA-5 ?
The problem with all the SFF documents is that they mostly have been
develop completely outside of the T10 or T13 community. In general
the SFF documents are out-of-phase with the T10 and T13 activities.
>I'd like someone to explain me the correct way of working when managing
>ATAPI devices.
The "correct" way? Well, my opinion is you ignore ALL SFF documents
(with two exceptions) and use only the T10 SCSI command set
documents. The only SFF-80xx document that has not found a home at
T10 is the SFF-8070 (super floppy) and QIC157 (tape). But really a
super floppy is a "block device" and should be desribed by T10's SBC
document.
>- first read ATA-5 rev 3 then get extra info from 8090 ?
Use ATA/ATAPI-x for the phyiscal and logical interface (the transport
layer) and then use the appropriate T10 document for the SCSI
commands transported by the ATA/ATAPI PACKET command. Yea, I know,
there are some cases when you just can not ignore those SFF-80xx
documents even when most are obsolete or very much out-of-date.
>- don't bother and just use sff 8090 standard, hoping it's full compatible
>with what's written in ATA-5 rev 3
I know it is a minor point but... The SFF-80xx documents are not
STANDARDS, they are only SPECIFICATIONS written by some group of
people. The T10 documents generally are STANDARDS or other types of
ANSI approved documents. The point is that anyone can write a SFF
document and make it look like it is or should be a widely
implemented "standard". But only ANSI or IEEE or ISO, etc, can
produce true STANDARDS.
*** Hale Landis *** [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
*** Niwot, CO USA *** www.ata-atapi.com ***
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