Re: [Comp] More problems (revisited)

>  Is this like an ASPI layer?

Yeah, somewhat.


> Is a TWAIN a kind of bios, that needs to be there before a driver can "find"
> a device?

Not really.  Twain is an interface to the *driver* of a device for all software,
somewhat like a system call that says "scanner, where are you?"  It just 
prevents
you from having to have a special piece of software for interfacing with your
scanner.  It's similar to the concept of an API- people sat down and said "such
and such a call will do this and that."

> Is an ADAPTEC LAYER like this?

This adaptec thing is an ASPI thing, yes.  ASPI is a pretty flawed 
implementation
of a concept that was somewhat shaky to begin with.  It rose out of the problem,
originally, with those old, non-ide cdroms.  Most plugged into your sound card;
the interfaces were called 'ide', panasonic, and mitsumi (others?  can't
remember).  Anyway, the problem was how to come up with a common standard to 
talk
to all these devices, enter ASPI.  Everything later went to IDE, and joined the
ATAPI standard.

Currently, cd writers use this ASPI layer, and apparently, most writing errors
arise from problems in this layer.  Linux manages to avoid the layer (or at
least, the problems associated with it) altogether, although I'm not really sure
how. :)

Adaptec has a utility called ASPICHK, which you can get from their website, that
checks your layer for problems.


> Most video cards (and I think ata66 add on cards, and maybe scsi cards as
> well) have a "pre- bios" that shows up first on post before the system bios
> posts, is this like that?

No, this is a firmware thing; ASPI is quite software.


> but hey, its nothing I cant fix with fdisk and format...

I could think of at least one other way of fixing it. ;)


John

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