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===== Release notes for ftape-2.08, 14/03/96 =====

If you correct a problem with ftape, please send your patch to

khp@dolphinics.no too.

- Updated to reflect that NR_MEM_LISTS is gone in 1.3.74

- Teac 700 added to list of known drives.

- The registered device name is now "ft" rather than "ftape".

===== Release notes for ftape-2.07a, 14/03/96 =====

Bugfixes by Marcin Dalecki :

- In the last release it just compiled against 1.3.70;

  now the params to request_irq() and free_irq are() are fixed, so it also

  works in 1.3.73 :-)

- Support for modules is now correct for newer kernels.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.07, 04/03/96 =====

- ftape updated to compile against 1.3.70.

- Iomega 700 and Wangtek 3200 recognised.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.06b, 13/02/96 =====

Another simple bugfix version.

- Jumbo 700 recognised.

- Typo in vendors.h fixed.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.06a, 10/02/96 =====

This release is a simple bugfix version.

- Linux/SMP: ftape *should* work, if you remember to add the symbol __SMP__

  to the Makefile (you know what I'm talking about, if you're playing with

  Linux/SMP :).

- FC-10/20: Only accepts IRQs 3-7, or 9.  If IRQ 9, properly tell the card

  to use IRQ 2.  Thanks to Greg Crider (gcrider@iclnet.org) for finding and

  locating this bug and testing the patch.

- Insight drive recognised correctly again.

- Motor-on wakeup version of the Iomega 250 drive added

===== Release notes for ftape-2.06, 28/01/96 =====

Special thanks go to Neal Friedman and Steven Sorbom for their

help in producing and testing this release.

I have continued to clean up the code, with an eye towards inclusion

of ftape in Linus' official kernel (In fact, as I type this, I am

running on a kernel with ftape support statically linked).  I have

test-compiled ftape against my 1.2.13 tree without problems.

Hopefully, everything should be OK for the v1.2.x people.

WARNING! Alan Cox has mailed me that ftape does *NOT* work with

Linux/SMP.  If you try to run ftape under Linux/SMP, it will cause a

kernel deadlock (which is worse than a panic).

- QIC-3020/TR-3: 1Mbps support works.  Neal is capable of reading and

  writing data to a tape.  ftape will automatically detect the type of

  tape (e.g. TR-3 vs QIC-80) and move the fdc in and out of

  "perpendicular mode" as necessary.

- 2Mbps support is disabled by default, since it is not fully

  debugged.  If you are adventurous, remove -DFDC_82078SL in the

  Makefile and see what happens :-)

- fdc detection: silly bugs removed (Only 2Mbps fdcs were affected)

  and added detection of the National Semiconductors PC8744 fdc chip

  (used in the PC873xx "super-IO" chips).

- Removed warning about incompatible types when compiling with Linux

  1.2.x.

- README.PCI updated with info about the DELL Dimension XPS P90.

- Connor TST3200R added to detected drives.

- `swapout' utility added to distribution.  It will dirty 5Meg of

  memory, trying to swap out other programs.  Just say `make swapout'

  to build it.  ftape will do this automatically Real Soon Now (ie:

  when I have found out which kernel memory alloc function to call).

===== Release notes for ftape-2.05, 08/01/96 =====

- For v1.2.x Kernels, you must apply the patch linux-1.2/ksyms.patch to

  the kernel and rebuild it (it adds the __get_dma_pages symbol to

  ksyms.c).

- Included new asm-i386/io.h file from v1.3.x kernel series, to enable

  gcc v.2.7.[12] to compile v1.2.x kernels (linux-1.2/io.h).

- Module versions: If you wish to compile ftape as a versioned module,

  you must first compile your kernel with CONFIG_MODVERSIONS=y.

  Otherwise, you will get complaints that  does not

  exist (if that happens, a `touch modversions.h' will help you out).

- CLK_48MHZ: new define in the Makefile (default: non-zero).  If you have

  a tape controller card that uses the i82078(-1) chip, but cannot get

  it to work with ftape, try set it to 0 (and please report this).

- QIC-3010/3020: Complete support is still missing, but will hopefully

  come soon.  Steven Sorbom has kindly provided me with hints about

  this.  Writing of QIC-3020 tapes definitely does NOT work (do not try

  it! - the drive will not be in "perpendicular mode" and this will ruin

  the formatting info on the tape).

- ftape_num_buffers is out of fashion: use NR_BUFFERS instead (and

  recompile if you want to change it :-).

===== Release notes for ftape-2.04, 01/01/96 =====

This version by Kai Harrekilde-Petersen 

- ALERT! Support for Kernels earlier then v1.1.85 is about to go away.

  I intend to clean up some of the code (getting rid of an annoyingly

  large numbers of #ifdef mostly), which means that support for

  pre-1.1.85 kernels must go as well.

- NR_FTAPE_BUFFERS is gone; You can instead select the number of dma

  buffers by saying `insmod ftape.o ftape_num_buffer=' instead.

- Configure script gone.  ftape will now automagically determine your

  kernel version by /usr/include/linux/version.h instead.

- CONFIG_MODVERSIONS now work.  All combinations of versioned /

  unversioned kernel and ftape module works (at least with my 1.3.52

  kernel).

- If you have problems with inserting ftape into an old (1.2.x)

  kernel (e.g. insmod says "1.2.8 does not match 1.2.8), recompile

  your modules utilities with your new compiler.

- Reveal TB1400 drive added to vendors.h

- Support for the i82078-1 (2Mbps) chip is coming along.  The

  biggest problem is that I don't have such a card, which makes

  testing / debugging somewhat problematic.  The second biggest

  problem is that I do not have the QIC-3010/3020 standards either.

  Status right now is that the chip is detected, and it should be

  possible to put it into 2Mbps mode.  However, I do not know what

  "extras" are needed to complete the support.  Although putting the

  i82078 into 1Mbps mode ought to work out of the box, it doesn't

  (right now, ftape complains about id am errors).

===== Release notes for ftape-2.04beta5, 29/12/95 =====

Bas offline linux-tape

----------------------

For reasons only known to the majordomo mail list processor, Bas was

kicked off the linux-tape list sometime during the summer.  Being

overworked at his for-pay job, he didn't notice it much.  Instead I

(Kai, khp@dolphinics.no) has worked on ftape to produce the 2.04(beta)

version.

zftape

------

Note that there exists a much improved version of ftape, written by

Claus-Justus Heine  which is named

zftape, which conforms to the QIC-80 specs on how to mark backups, and

is capable of doing automatic compression.  However, zftape makes

substantial changes to ftape, and I (Kai) have therefore declined to

integrate zftape into ftape.  Hopefully, this will happen soon.

CONFIG_QIC117 removed from the kernel

-------------------------------------

The biggest change of all is that ftape now will allocate its dma

buffers when it is inserted.  The means that the CONFIG_QIC117 option

has disappeared from the Linux kernel as of v1.3.34.  If you have an

earlier kernel, simply answer 'no' to the question will do the trick

(if you get complains about __get_free_pages() missing, contact the

linux-tape mailing list).

Note that ftape-2.04beta will work equally well on kernels with and

without `ftape support'.  The only catch is, that you will waste

around 96-128Kb of precious DMA'able memory on a box that has ftape

support compiled in.

Now for the real changes:

- FC-20 can now use DMA channels 1, 2, and 3. Thanks to Daniel

  Cohen, catman@wpi.edu.

- ftape no longer requires a (gigantic) 96Kb buffer to be statically

  allocated by the kernel.

- Added new Iomega drive (8882) to vendors.h

- -fno-strength-reduce added to Makefile, since GCC is broken.

- i82078-1 (2Mbps) FDC support started.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.03b, 27/05/95 =====

- Prevented verify_area to return error if called with zero length.

- Fixed a bug in flush_buffers that caused too much padding to be

  written when a final segment had bad sectors.

- Increased maximum fast-seek overshoot value from 5 to 10 segments.

- Breaking loop after 5 retries when positioning fails.

- Fixed wrong calculation of tape length for QIC-3010 and QIC-3020

  tapes (densities were swapped).

- Fixed wrong calculation of overshoot on seek_forward: Wrong sign

  of error.

- Suppress (false) error message due to new tape loaded.

- Added two new CMS drives (11c3 and 11c5) to vendors.h.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.03a, 09/05/95 =====

- Fixed display of old error (even if already cleared) in ftape_open.

- Improved tape length detection, ioctls would fail for 425 ft tapes.

  Until the tape length is calculated with data from the header

  segment, we'll use worst-case values.

- Clear eof_mark after rewinding ioctls.

- Fixed wrong version message (2.03 had 2.02g id).

- Fixed bug that caused the fdc to be reset very frequently.

  This shouldn't affect normal operation but the timing of the

  report routines has changed again and that may cause problems.

  We'll just have to find out....

- Implemented correct write precompensation setting for QIC-3010/3020.

- Cleaned up fdc_interrupt_wait routine. Hope it still works :-)

- Finally removed (already disabled) special eof mark handling for

  gnu tar.

- Changed order of get_dma_residue and disable_dma in fdc-isr.c

  because the current order would fail on at least one system.

  We're back to the original order again, hope (and expect) this

  doesn't break any other system.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.03, 07/05/95 =====

(Changes refer to the first ftape-2.02 release)

Support for wide and extended length tapes

------------------------------------------

The Conner TSM 420 and 850 drives are reported to be working.

I haven't received any reports about other brands; the TSM 420

and 850 seem to be the most widely used wide drives.

Extended length tapes (425 ft) with normal QIC-80 drives

are operating too (At least I've had no reports stating otherwise).

_Not_ yet completely supported (although they may work) are

QIC-3020 drives and 2 Mbps floppy disk controllers won't work at

the highest speed.

If someone is kind enough to send me one of these, I'll include

support for it too ;-)

Easier configuration

--------------------

Problems due to wrong settings in the Makefile are prevented

by using a configuration script that sets the necessary (kernel

version dependent) compile time options.

This kernel version is now determined from the sources found

at /usr/src/linux, or if not found, the old way using

/proc/version.

Versioned modules will be used automatically when supported

by- and configured in- the kernel.

Note that the current modules code (1.1.87) is still broken

and _needs_ the fix included in the insmod directory.

Please don't send me any more Oops reports caused by insmod :-(

Reduced module size

-------------------

The standard module size is much reduced and some compile time

options can even reduce it further. (I don't recommend this

for normal use but it can be handy for rescue diskettes)

Option:           Approx. module size:

             150 Kb

NO_TRACE               125 Kb

NO_TRACE_AT_ALL         67 Kb

Much improved driver interruption

---------------------------------

Most possible loops have been broken and signal detection

has been improved.

In most cases the driver can be aborted by ^C (SIGINT) and

SIGKILL (kill -9) will generate be a sure kill.

(Note that aborting a tape operation may damage the last

data written to tape)

Improved error recovery

-----------------------

Ftape now returns an error (ENODATA) to the application if

a segment proves to be unrecoverable and then skips the

bad segment.

This causes most applications to continue to work (tar

and afio) loosing only a small amount (up to 29 Kb) of data.

Retried read operations will now be done slightly off-track

to improve the chance of success. Serious head off-track

errors will be detected.

FC-10 and FC-20 controllers

---------------------------

Ftape now supports both the old CMS FC-10 and the newer FC-20

controllers.

Because the operation of these cards is still undocumented,

thus far they will only work with the default settings (See

Makefile). Any feed-back on how to use them with other settings

will be welcome !

Compilation will fail if one changes the settings to illegal

values.

Kernels and compilers

---------------------

Ftape is currently being developed using the 2.5.8 compiler.

The older 2.4.5 probably works too (Set option in Makefile!).

I have no experience with any later compilers nor Elf support.

Any information on this is welcome.

The latest kernel I have tested ftape with is 1.2.6.

Compression

-----------

An impressive collection of changes for ftape including

on-the-fly compression is still lying on my desk.

If 2.03 proves to be reliable I might start integrating these

but as usual, I'm short in time :-(

Formatting

----------

There is still no way to format tapes under Linux. As far as

I know all attempts to write such a program have died now.

Since formatted tapes are rather common now, I think all we

need is a utility that writes a worst case pattern and verifies

that with the drive put in verify mode, reducing margins.

Any takers ?

Furthermore

-----------

Cleaned up messages.

Prepared to support multiple tape drives on one fdc.

Thanks to all the people who sent bug reports and helped me

improve the driver. Without trying to be complete I'll mention

Gary Anderson (without his accurate reports and unreliable

hardware there wouldn't be a 2.03), Stefan Kneifel (FC-20),

Robert Broughton (FC-20, you were almost there ;-), Bjorn

Ekwall (for the versioned modules and buggy insmod ;-), Peter

Fox, Christopher Oliver, Ralph Whittaker and not the least

Linus Torvalds (for Linux and keeping me busy because of

changes to the kernel ;-)

Thanks to anyone I forgot, for the bug reports, the ftape

bashing and the mental support...

That's it for now. Have Fun,

Bas.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02g, 06/05/95 =====

- Added extra test to break read-id loop with signal.

- Changed rewind code to handle negative overshoot for drives

  that take very long to start or stop.

- Let use of get/set i/o-regions depend on kernel version.

- Changed code to use a more general test for conditional

  compilations depending on kernel version.

- Improved micro-step functionality to go off-track only

  while reading (id & data).

- Added failure on tape-not-referenced bit in ftape_command.

- Added FOREVER option to read-wait routine.

- Changed read-id to use shorter timeout causing smaller

  rewinds on timeout.

- Made kernel-interface functions static.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02f, 03/05/95 =====

- Added support for dual tape drives on my system, extended Configure

  script to detect host 'dodo'.

- Log media defect in history if ecc failed and no data was returned.

- Fixed Configure script that was failing for kernel versions with

  double digit version or revision numbers.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02e, 01/05/95 =====

- Fixed reposition loop at logical eot (failing read_id).

- Fixed 34 segment offset when rewinding.

- Added fast seek capability for more than 255 segments.

- Fixed wrong busy result from ftape_command causing reverse

  seek to fail.

- Added breakout from infinite rewind loop (if something fails).

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02d, 30/04/95 =====

- Improved abortion on signals: Interrupt will make a graceful

  exit, Kill will be less nice and should be used if everything

  else fails.

- Included check for tape-head off track.

- Implemented exit from tape-start loop.

- Added kernel io-port registration.

- Implemented skip of failing segment (ENODATA) on ecc failure.

  This allows afio and tar to continue when the tape is damaged.

- Made distinction between drive names with different codes.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02c, 22/04/95 =====

- Fixed too tight command queueing after tape stop/pause command

  issued from within interrupt service routine (Showed as timeout

  on Acknowledge errors during retries on some systems)

- Tried to fix timeouts when using 425 ft tape because the extended

  length doesn't seem to be detected by the hardware.

  We now use the format code from the header segment so adjust the

  timing after reading the header segment.

- Fixed some messages stating 'unexpected something...' being not

  unexpected anymore.

- Started preparations for merge of dynamic buffer allocation and

  compression code.

- Changed some debug messages to include relevant segment information

  at level 4.

- Included early bail-out when drive offline, preventing a lot of

  false messages.

- Moved ftape_parameter_xxx() offsets into function instead of in calls.

- Removed 'weird, drive busy but no data' error when caused by

  an error during a read-id.

- Improved 'timeout on acknowledge' diagnostics.

- Moved MODULE option into Configure.

- Reduced code size when no tracing at all was set (Claus Heine).

- No longer log error code 0 (no error) as an error.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02b, 09/04/95 =====

- Relaxed timing for status operation and displaying

  abnormal results. Hopefully this shows what's going

  wrong with the Conner TSM850R drives.

- Created script for configuration, using version number

  of kernel source if available, otherwise /proc/version.

- Fixed conditionals in kernel-interface.c.

- Removed unavoidable TRACE output.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02a, 01/04/95 =====

- Implemented `new-style' (versioned) modules support for new

  kernels.

- Reduced size of module by moving static data to bss.

- Now using version number of kernel source instead of running

  kernel for kernel versions >= 1.1.82

- Added feedback on drive speeds to vendor information.

- Included fixed insmod sources to distribution (Let's hope

  the modules distribution get fixed soon :-/).

Note that I haven't yet implemented any of the code extension I

received. I hope to find some time to do this soon.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.02, 15/01/95 =====

- Fixed failing repositioning when overshoot was incremented.

- Fixed rate selection: Because of a deficiency in the QIC-117

  specification one cannot distinguish between a not implemented

  and a failing command. Therefor we now try to find out if the

  drive does support this command before usage.

- Fixed error retry using wrong offset in fdc-isr.

- Improved retry code to retry only once on a single no-data

  error in a segment.

- Validate sector number extracted from eof mark because an

  invalid file mark (due to ???) could cause kernel panic.

- Split ftape-io.c into ftape-io.c and ftape-ctl.c files.

- Corrected too high media error count after writing to

  a bad tape.

- Added #include  again because old kernel versions

  need it.

- Fixed fdc not being disabled when open failed because no tape

  drive was found.

- Fixed problem with soft error in sector 32 (shift operator with

  shiftcount 32 is not defined).

===== Release notes for ftape-2.01, 08/01/95 =====

- Removed TESTING setting from distributed Makefile.

- Fixed `mt asf' failure: Rewind was deferred to close which

  overruled the fsf ioctl.

- Prevented non-interruptible commands being interrupted.

- Added missing timeout.pause setting.

- Maximum tape speed read from drive type information table.

  If the information is not in the table (0) the drive will

  determine the speed itself and put a message in the logfile.

  This information should then be added to the table in the

  vendors.h file (and reported to me).

- Added call to ftape_init_drive after soft reset for those

  (antique) drives that don't do an implicit seek_load_point

  after a reset or power up.

- Don't try to set data rate if reset failed.

- Prevent update of seek variables when starting from the

  beginning or the end of the tape.

- Fixed wrong adjustment of overshoot in seek_forward().

- Added sync to Makefile (again).

- Added code to diagnose timer problems (calibr.c).

- Replaced time differences by timediff calls.

- Removed reference to do_floppy from object for recent kernels.

- Fixed wrong display of 'failing dma controller' message.

- Removed various no longer used #include statements.

- Added max. tape speed value to vendor-struct.

- Changed ftape-command to check pre-conditions and wait

  if needed.

- Further updated qic117.h to rev G.

- Combined command name table and restrictions table to one.

  Extended this table with some new fields.

- Increased timeout on Ack timer value and included code to

  report out of spec behaviour.

- Increased rewind timeout margin to calculated + 20%.

- Improved data rate selection so it won't fail on some

  older (pre standard) drives.

- Changed initialisation code so drive will be rewound if the

  driver is reloaded and the tape is not at bot.

- Moved some of the flush operations from close to the ioctls.

- Added exit code value to failing verify area message.

- Loop until tape halted in smart-stop.

- Fast seek handled specially if located at bot or eot.

- Being more conservative on overshoot value.

===== Release notes for ftape-2.00, 31/12/94 =====

  The Install-guide is completely rewritten and now also includes

some information on how to use the driver. If you're either new

to ftape or new to Unix tape devices make sure to read it !

  If you own a pci system and experience problems with the

ftape driver make sure to read the README.PCI file. It contains

some hints on how to fix your hardware.

  For anybody who hasn't noticed: The version number of the

driver has been incremented (The latest released version has

been version 1.14d).

  This has been done for two major reasons:

  o  A new (better) error recovery scheme is implemented.

  o  Support for new drive types has been added.

  All these improvements/changes will probably include a couple

of new (and old?) bugs. If you encounter any problems that you think

I'm not yet aware of, feel free to send a report to .

  I recommend keeping a version of ftape-1.14d available, just

in case ;-)

  This version should work with all kernel versions from 1.0.9 up

to 1.1.72 (and probably earlier and later versions too).

Major new features:

- Better handling of tapes with defects: When a sector repeatedly

  (SOFT_RETRIES in ftape.h) cannot be written to or read from it is

  marked as an hard error and gets skipped.

  The error correction code can handle up to three of these hard

  errors provided there are no other errors in that segment (32 Kb).

- Allows writing to tapes with defects (although the risk of loosing

  data increases !)

  Look for the media-defects entry printed with the statistics when

  the tape is closed. A non-zero value here shows a bad tape.

  [the actual count is wrong (too high), this is a known bug].

- Use of backup header segment if first one is failing.

- Support for extended length tapes with QIC-80: both 425 and 1100 ft.

  0.25 inch tapes are now recognized and handled.

- Support for new QIC-80 drives with 8 mm `wide' tapes (e.g. Conner

  TSM 420).

- Support for new QIC-3010 and QIC-3020 drives (experimental) with

  both 0.25 inch and 8 mm tapes.

Some minor features were added, a couple of small bugs were fixed and

probably some new ones introduced ;-).

[lseek() didn't make it into this version]

Have fun,

Bas.

----