At the start of May this year, Castle Technology announced some details of a SCSI driver framework for the Iyonix. Some time after the announcement, their SCSI documentation page was eventually graced with lots of API details.On Monday this week, Castle released the source code to an example SCSISoft driver, which in reality is the driver for the Acorn SCSI card. The example driver and included documents are useful for developers wishing to implement support for a SCSI based storage system.
"An increasing number of devices are using SCSI command protocols over
non-SCSI connections", Castle claim in the new SCSI documentation. "Examples include ATAPI (SCSI-over-ATA), Iomega Zip drives (SCSI-over-Parallel) and USB Mass Storage devices (SCSI-over-USB)."
Castle's new "SCSI switcher" filing system enables "multiple 'SCSI-like' interfaces can be handled simultaneously". So, as an example, you can use a SCSI harddisc (with suitable interface card) and a SCSI-like USB file storage device at the same time through Castle's central SCSIFS.
It's clear that Castle are keen to woo third party developers to the Iyonix platform. Given that the computer boasts USB and PCI expansion capabilities, there's a vast range of existing PCI and USB based hardware so RISC OS developers can concentrate on just the drivers. An immediate pool of existing available drivers can be found grazing in the open source Linux arena, however these all require a high degree of low level porting to get them up and running on RISC OS.
Links
SCSI API details