On 21st March 2002 Paul Sanderson wrote Whilst it should be reasonably straight forward to write a firmware imager for IDE disk I think that SCSI disks will be another kettle of fish. SCSI drives are normally accessed through the ASPI interface under DOS and ASPI/SPTI under Windows. if memory serves me each card is basically different so you either need to specify a particular controller card in the PC or write for all of them... Yes Paul, it's a perfectly reasonable point that we *normally* use ASPI on a Wintel platform, mainly becuse it alleviates the resonsibility for the low-level stuff in a commercial applications development environment. However, in our situation, this is not really an issue. I'm suggesting we work at the lowest possible level, maybe using one of the many compact industrial *PC functionality* board sets. Even then, you might not have to consider interfacing the computer side of the SCSI yourself- you could be supplied with appropriate drivers. And even if you use a PC, different SCSI cards are different on this interface, I grant you, but (unless I am seriously out of date) the SCSI bus side interface and command set have to be universal otherwise you could not plug any drive into any card. I think the confusion comes from still thinking in terms of a desktop PC+Win something. And BTW, we have a perfectly viable ASPI system under Linux, which is open source so you could use this as a model if you wanted to go that route. However, I think the simpler the better. And I have to take issue with "most jurors" being PC literate. Many PC support people aren't PC literate in the sense I am talking about. I know, because I spend some time teaching them. The key to a convincing exposition in court is that it is *simple* so people *think* they understand. Winning is about confidence, not absolute truth. Hence "beyond reasonable doubt", which is in objective terms about as well defined as the "sure and certain hope" of the burial service! Michael D. Barwise, BSc, IEng, MIIE, MBCS Computer Security Awareness tel +44 (0)1442 266534 http://www.ComputerSecurityAwareness.com Addressing the Human Equation in Information Security ----------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service. For more information on this free incident handling, management and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com
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