Re: Compact flash disk and slave drives in 2.4.2

[Padraig Brady]

I'm still confused :-(
When you say:

"CFA is dropped into a pcmica/cardbus thingy.

Also there are no CFA's which are ATA devices by the definition, they
require a host-bridge to transport the signal.  Handling host-bridges is
the problem.  As more and stranger usages of these bridges happen the more
screwy thing get."

This is not the case I'm talking about. CF is not always off PCMCIA.
Any CF I've used I can plug directly onto the IDE on the motherboard
using a very simple passive adapter, detailed in the spec.
For e.g. I use http://www.pcengines.com/cflash.htm

In this mode it should be just treated as another ATA device IMHO.

Padraig.

Andre Hedrick wrote:

> hdx=flash is only a flag to deal with flash.
> 
> a better description is probe-slave-with-master-flash, or
> to-hell-with-flash-go-look.
> 
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Richard A. Smith wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 09:17:48 -0800 (PST), Andre Hedrick wrote:
>> 
>>> not acceptable.  If you have a complain take it to CFA commitee and have
>>> them fix it.
>> 
>> Well my only real complaints are that 1) It was done silently.. 2) I could not override it 
>> w/o a code mod.  Both of which are contrary to what I am accustom to when using linux.
> 
> Nothing is done privately or silently, sometime I try to second guess the
> needs and add things so that when the question pops up, I can say, gee:
> This was the guy that was going to ask that question, glad I had an early
> answer.
> 
> It was addressed some time ago when there was a case of a firewall box
> using two CFA's in a HOST->CFA thingy. This was where hda/hdb were both
> CFA's
> 
> Override a probe that can hang a system is not going to happen.
> You override the blocking flag first, then the generic overide is not
> needed.
> 
>>> Logically treated, is true, but again CFA does not follow the rules of
>>> what the ATA committee gives them, and I refuse to break rules as the
>>> standard model.  Rule breaking are exceptions.
>>> 
>>> Also show me a case where a laptop will do master/slave in CFA.
>> 
>> Agreed... If CF does some wierd stuff then you shouldn't make the ATA driver break any 
>> rules for it.. that wasn't what I was asking for.  Just some why's and perhaps a message 
>> that indicated what it was doing.
> 
> The problem is that body does more things outside a commitee than it does
> inside.  So the docs do not reflect reality or impose usage rules.
> 
>> As for the laptops.. What laptops are you refering to?  Don't most of them have some sort 
>> of std laptop HD or an ibm microdrive thing.  CF is terribly expensive compared to 
>> mechanical HDs.
> 
> CFA is dropped into a pcmica/cardbus thingy.
> 
> Also there are no CFA's which are ATA devices by the definition, they
> require a host-bridge to transport the signal.  Handling host-bridges is
> the problem.  As more and stranger usages of these bridges happen the more
> screwy thing get.
> 
>>> /linux/drivers/ide/ide.c
>>> * "hdx=flash"          : allows for more than one ata_flash disk to be
>>> *                              registered. In most cases, only one device
>>> *                              will be present.
>> 
>> Perhaps I missed something.. but this won't work for my original case.  I have a CF as hda 
>> and I was trying to hook up a mechanical HD as the slave.  I specified hdb=c,h,s on the 
>> command line but it was ignored.
> 
> Again it is only a flag that allows for probing of a slave device if the
> primary is a flash.
> 
> Now if the reactions/responses are wrong then it needs a fix, but to allow
> systems to hang because of a nonexistant device is not something Linus
> will allow, period.