Minix CD support 

Q: Can I read CD's from minix? If so, what CD-ROM drives are supported?

A: As of the release of Minix 2.0, there is support for the Adaptec
1542 SCSI adapter, which in turn can support a CD-ROM drive with a
SCSI interface.

There is also support for the proprietary Mitsumi CD-ROM interface.

The CD-ROM support software does not support mounting the CD as a file
system. What is provided is a set of utility programs for reading
files and directories from an ISO-9660 CD file system. These
utilities, isoread and isodir, work in a similar way to the dosread,
dosdir, and doswrite utilities that allow access to files on an MS-DOS
file system.

There is also a Minix program that allows you to listen to an audio
CD-ROM while using your computer. This requires a Soundblaster card
and the Mitsumi CD-ROM interface. The SCSI interface driver currently
does not have the ioctls necessary for audio CDs.

Support for other proprietary interfaces and for IDE interfaces is
needed.  Examples of how to do it are already available in the SCSI
and Mitsumi code, all that is needed is for someone to accept the
challenge.

The CD support is relatively new and has not been widely tested. There
is a known bug in isoread that prevents access to a file if another
file's name is a prefix of its name.

asw 11 Oct 1996

--------------------------------
 Albert S. Woodhull
 Hampshire College, Amherst, MA     
 awoodhull@hampshire.edu   
 http://minix1.hampshire.edu/asw/