Re: mint-aware HD driver

[Claus Brod <clausb@hpbeo79.bbn.hp.com>]

> All you need is the driver in two parts, the lower part being an interrupt
> based hardware driver 
> which picks up requests (which included a pointer to a buffer) from a
> queue and passes back "done" messages. The upper determines the device,
> places a request on the queue, puts the process on the I/O pending queue and
> returns.
[...]
> How's that?

Not bad, although I'm concerned about the overhead that such a split
driver would cause. But anyway, the driver's design is not the main
problem, as I mentioned in my previous post.

> But then all existing software for HD would have to be changed to use
> >it correctly.
> 
> Methinks this will have to be done anyway, the current ones busy idle as far
> as I can tell.

Why should old software *have* to be changed?  Software that
blocks I/O channels is annoying, but it's not really harmful, and
it can still work in a multitasking environment.  Let's be
realistic:  Most programmers do not invest any time in their old
Atari programs and have moved to other projects/platforms, so it
would be highly unadvisable to break old software *now*.

--clausb@hpbeo79.bbn.hp.com-----------------------------------------------
Claus Brod, MDD, HP Boeblingen      Magic is real unless declared integer.
--#include <std_disclaimer>-----------------------------------------------