RE: ide-floppy.c vs devfs

[Borsenkow Andrej]

> 
> This is made somewhat more complicated by the fact that ide-floppy
disks
> can use either the whole disk, with no partition table or, more
> commonly, partition4.  So a user-friendly solution would be to create
a
> floppy node that pointed to the partition, if it existed, or the whole
> disk if it didn't.  With appropriate code to handle that fact that
> anyone can partition these disks in any way they like.
> 

Where's the problem? Use .../disc for whole disc or .../part4 for
"normal" access. (Or /dev/hdc and /dev/hdc4 if you prefer) It is nice if
partition code can detect it but it is not ide-floppy driver problem.

> Note this doesn't take account of the nice ATAPI command that sets the
> disk into "ignore track 0" mode, making a partition 4 look like an
> entire floppy with 1 less track.
> 

Why complicate things more than needed?

> Anyone up to telling me how this is handled in the SCSI layer?
> 

When I boot without media in Jaz drive I get something like "no media
inserted, assuming 1GB 512B per sector". Actually I modeled my patch
from this - use some default values reported by drive when no media
currently exists.

-andrej