Conference msgaxp::optical

769.0. "RW500 and OpenVMS V6.x or later ???" by FIREBL::LEEDS (From VAXinated to Alphaholic) Mon Feb 03 1997 13:27

Got the attached from a customer. Any suggestions ??

Regards,

Arlan

Our story thus far:

I have a DEC RW 500 optical disk jukebox in my office.  The optical
drive inside has the annoying habit of reporting itself as a SCSI
device type "OPT" (for optical) instead of "DIR" (for direct-access).
This makes the standard SCSI disk driver, which is looking for "DIR"
type devices,  reluctant to talk to the optical drive.

Under OpenVMS VAX, this drive worked just fine under VMS 6.0; I was able to
use the jukebox by commanding the robot with my own software and using
VMS to read/write the optical drive via the standard SCSI driver.

Under VMS 6.2, this failed.  All operations to the optical drive
failed with the most popular error being "medium is offline".  My
information from DEC telephone support is that this was deliberate;
the VMS SCSI driver was made to become a real stickler about the SCSI-2
standard.  The SCSI disk driver recognized the device, but would not
talk to it.

Under VMS 7.0, the situation degraded even further, to the point that
the SCSI disk driver failed to recognize that the drive even existed.

So the upshot is that, by the simple act of upgrading VMS, DEC's own
peripheral stopped working, and furthermore, that DEC broke it on pur-
pose, albeit indirectly.

Now I know that DEC has some snazzy jukebox management software that
will turn the jukebox into a single humongous file system and use the
robot to bake bread when it isn't busy changing disks and all kinds of
other fancy stuff.  I don't need it, and I don't want it.  I just want
for the SCSI disk driver should talk to the optical disk.

Fortunately for me, personally, Ultrix handles this quite nicely.
Through scu, you can *tell* Ultrix to pretend that the SCSI drive
which reported itself as type "OPT" is really type "DIR".  The bog-
standard SCSI disk driver is then more than happy to talk to the
drive, and the jukebox works just fine under Ultrix.

This same procedure almost works under OSF/1; misfortunately, scu
gives some utterly irrelevant error message and refuses to change
its idea about the drive type.

But that's another story; my primary concern is about VMS.  I'd
*really* like to get a VMS SCSI disk driver for VMS 6.2 and 7.0
(and *beyond*) that will talk to the optical disk drive in the
same way that VMS 6.0 did.

Anything you might be able to do would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

    Please try V7.1; much was done to allow opticals to work with dkdriver
    although there's no RW500 here to test with. The business about the
    disk reporting itself as "opt" instead of "dir" (actually, SCSI
    type 7 rather than 0 as I recall) should be inconsequential except
    maybe for autoconfigure.
    
    The only "support" for non-512-byte sectors is that I *think* the
    $qio access will work. Without a disk to test on it cannot be
    completely guaranteed.
    
    However I have booted VMS from a 230 MB Sony optical and regularly
    use an RWZ52 as a disk (with r/w media).
    
    glenn
    

    Sounds like the customer got caught in the trap of a "company needs to
    make money".  Many SCSI drivers of various operating systems have had
    "it-happens-to-work" functionality in their early drivers, this didn't
    mean that all of these functions were supported.  As the SCSI business
    grew and support issues have arisen, the development and functionality
    of these products has changed.
    
    Glenn's idea (.1) may buy the customer some more time, but until Digital
    decides to have OpenVMS engineering support optical devices and not the
    optical storage group the customer won't be much better off.
    
    I do not believe it has ever been Digital's policy to imply that
    "happens-to-work" functionality means that a device is supported.
    Also, I do not believe it has ever been Digital's policy to imply
    that a "happens-to-work" device will continue to work in the future.
    
    If the customer can find some documentation that proves Digital has
    wronged them then maybe you can get corrective action taken.  Proof
    would be something like a product description that shows the O.S.
    provided support for the device.
    
    I would like to help the customer but, and a big but, providing
    software for free doesn't make money for Digital or put food on
    my table.
    
    Rob

    If the customer needs to make the drive report as direct access, it can
    be done via a mode page change. We don't usually recommend this, as the
    O/S's then may have trouble figuring out what it really is. Note also
    that all spares are set up as Optical.
    
    Mode page 21h, byte Eh, bit 0 needs to be set to 1 to report as direct
    access. This can be done from within OSMS, but the customer obviously
    does not have and does not want OSMS. 
    
    CHris