<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><br></div><div>Apart from the fact they emulate way more than just HDDs now, extending to many removable mediums like CD, DVD, Zip, MO etc., and even Ethernet interfaces.</div><div><br></div><div>Maybe we could settle on SCSI *device* emulator?</div><br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfSignature"><div dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On 30 Jun 2024, at 11:50, Mike Spooner via rescue <rescue@sunhelp.org> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto">I feel that HDD Emulator is fair, rather than SCSI Emulator.<br><br>- Mike</div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto">On 28 June 2024 15:20:30 BST, Dave McGuire via rescue <rescue@sunhelp.org> wrote:</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre class="k9mail"><div dir="auto">On 6/28/24 10:04, Jonathan Chapman via rescue wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #ad7fa8; padding-left: 1ex;"><div dir="auto">Another is that they don't talk directly to the hardware; they speak<br>some other disk interface protocol, such as SATA, out the other side.<br></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br>Moreover, they are often talking to something FAT32 formatted, and storing the SCSI targets as files. They can also be CD-ROMs, Ethernet adapters, etc.<br><br>Compare to an ACARD SCSI to IDE [to SATA] bridge, where you talk to the disk 1:1 w.r.t. blocks. Those are closer to a host interface bridge, IMO. More like a HVD <-> LVD bridge than whatever you want to call the modern iterations.<br><br>I think calling something like the BlueSCSI, ZuluSCSI, SCSI2SD, etc. an "emulator" is probably not wrong.<br></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br> Most if not all SCSI hard drives have a processor on them, frequently an i80186 or an Hitachi SuperH. What gets stored on the platters is completely opaque, and in many cases contains error control information, block remapping data, etc etc, i.e. a lot more than end-user data. There may be some form of filesystem involved, who knows? But even that term has a loose definition.<br><br> The interface to the platters is something very different from SCSI. Somewhere there's a dividing line between "analog" and "digital", but the line where it becomes "SCSI" is a good bit further in the same direction. Nearly all SCSI hard drives store data in an RLL format. The SCSI layer is unaware of it.<br><br> My point is, there's always stuff going on under the hood. The difference here is that with a ZuluSCSI or similar, we can see what's under the hood. So it's an SD card, something that we recognize as being also available for other applications. Does that make the whole assemblage an "emulator"? No. It's not emulating a SCSI mass storage device, it IS a SCSI mass storage device. Not an emulation, but an implementation.<br><br> -Dave<br><br></div></pre></blockquote></div><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org</span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>