Messages in this thread | | | From | (Jon Tombs) | Subject | Re: Zftape in kernel ? | Date | Mon, 25 Mar 1996 13:43:13 +0100 (MET) |
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Ulrich Windl said:
> > The latest kernels contain ftape. I think this should be replaced by zftape, or, > > zftape should be _also_ available in the kernel image. > > The reason for that is that zftape has better features: of course compressing (where > > that 'z' stand for) and qic80 support. > > Compression means "software compression a la gzip"? I don't see why > compression has to happen inside the driver. You can do it in > hardware or at user-level.
For the floppy type tape drives as used in the ftape/zftape driver, in order to avoide excessive tape ware and head damage the driver needs to keep the tape streaming, external compression programs often fail in this respect as they don't have the feed back on the tape status (I've been use gzip -1 with ftape which just about streams on my 486/33).
But for me the important difference between ftape/zftape is the qic80 standard support, it is a lots easier to be able to use the same tapes under dos and linux rather than keep two sets of tapes.
-- Jon. <jon@gte.esi.us.es, http://www.esi.us.es/~jon>
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