cbagger01
Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003 |
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Posted: Nov. 16 2005,17:51 |
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d2d,
Eventually, the day will come where the majority of computers use SATA for their disk controllers. Just like IDE replaced older systems like MFM? , SATA is replacing IDE.
Right now it is not a big problem because almost all CDROM drives shipped today are still IDE/ATAPI so you can get DSL up and running and then afterwords install the SATA drivers as modules from the net or somewhere else.
However, eventually even CDROM drives will be mass converted over to SATA and you will be unable to even get DSL booted into the KNOPPIX filesystem without the SATA drivers already being activated. So in this case, a modules_cut approach will not work and you will need to either compile the driver directly into the kernel (like the existing compiled-in IDE driver), OR add the SATA drivers to the initial ramdisk (minirt24.gz) and load them as part of the linuxrc initial start script.
Fortunately, the hardware industry is moving towards a standard SATA controller interface which should simplify and future-proof the driver process just like the industry standard IDE controller interface did.
Even so, the guys who wrote the Linux SATA drivers did a great job because they rolled all of the common SATA controller code into a shared library file called "libata". This means that most of the driver modules that I listed earlier in this thread are relatively small in size due to shared libata code.
So while a satadivers.dsl type system will work in the short term, longer term in order to maintain bootability, I expect that the drivers will need to be incorporated into the base ISO kernel or miniroot.
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