Public Domain TEAC driver for A/UX

[tony cooper]

I have written an A/UX TEAC driver for the TEAC MT-ST/50 drive. It has been
under beta test since October. It worked fine for me and noone else has
reported any problems with it. It's no hack - it was written specifically
for the TEAC drive using code that matches as closely as possible the code
for the tc driver from Apple (available from APDA $80) but differing in
essential ways since the TEAC is not block addressable. It supports all
the features of the TEAC drive (eg it has an ioctl for retensioning, it
uses the fast LOCATE command) and writes can be any blocksize multiple
of 512 bytes, not 8K. Writes are done using whatever size buffer you have
in a single SCSI command. It even compensates for some "features" of the 
A/UX SCSI manager. Indeed, if I don't say so myself, it is an excellent
product. I am ready to release it as a final version.

Well, I'm a liar. One person did report problems with it - lots of problems.
In fact, he said it made his hard drive beep. I've never heard a hard drive
beep before but it is definitely caused by using the TEAC drive. So what
can I do? I don't know what causes the problem. I can't replicate it. It's
not going to be easy debugging the problem from across the continent. And
what's more, I don't have a TEAC drive anymore. In the meantime I can't
release the product if it's going to make people's disks beep.

Anyone who wants a beta copy can send a request to tony at popserver.stanford.edu
I'm not going to post the driver to Sumex while it's still in beta.

Some people have trouble receiving the driver by mail. If you have asked for
a copy and have not received it then you might have to send me a floppy. That
means you, Dave Finklestein. I can't even get ordinary mail through to you
now.

Cheers,
Tony Cooper
tony at popserver.stanford.edu