RE: ATA/IP & ATAPI

[Costa Sapuntzakis <csapuntz@cisco.com>]

I should clarify. It seems there are two options here:

1) Rewrite the BIOS and OS ATA drivers to support ATA/IP

2) Have some hardware that bridges between ATA/ISA, which is what current
BIOSes and ATA drivers expect, and ATA/IP.

There is a middle ground perhaps where the BIOS emulates the old ATA/ISA
interface. This is already done with USB to support USB keyboards and mice
on legacy OSes.

-Costa

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Bradley, Mark wrote:

> From what you write below, it seems you envision some ATA chip
> trying to drive packets onto a wire (perhaps using some strange
> bridge).  Is this what you mean?
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Costa Sapuntzakis [mailto:csapuntz@cisco.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2000 10:06 AM
> > To: Bradley, Mark
> > Cc: ips@ece.cmu.edu
> > Subject: RE: ATA/IP & ATAPI
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Installed base is a very good argument. :) Here are some of the
> > issues:
> > 
> > Many ATA drivers are written to do register-level accesses. Rewriting
> > them to send packets will involve some serious reworking. 
> > 
> > An ATA/IP device could maintain a register interface to the host with
> > a special ATA/ISA<->ATA/IP bridge (either emulated in BIOS or as a
> > real PCI device).
> > 
> > Currently, all ATA devices plug into motherboards with
> > processors. These processors could act as SCSI<->ATA converters.
> > Or are there ATA-only functions that are lost by that sort of 
> > bridging?
> > Perhaps SMART...
> > 
> > Would an ATA/IP device be significantly simpler than a SCSI/IP device
> > from a firmware standpoint?
> > 
> > -Costa
> > 
> > On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Bradley, Mark wrote:
> > 
> > > About 85% of storage on IA32/64 systems is IDE/ATA.  Ignoring
> > > this substantial a volume seems inappropriate.  Further, there
> > > is a proposal for Serial ATA (SAT) that might lend better lend
> > > itself to this work.
> > >   --  markb
> > > 
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Costa Sapuntzakis [mailto:csapuntz@cisco.com]
> > > > Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2000 1:07 AM
> > > > To: ips@ece.cmu.edu
> > > > Subject: ATA/IP & ATAPI
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > What are the arguments for ATA/IP?
> > > > 
> > > > -Costa
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> 
> 
>