linux/Documentation/cdrom/bpcd	(c) 1996  Grant R. Guenther <grant@torque.net>

This file documents the bpcd driver for the MicroSolutions backpack CDrom,
an external parallel port device.  

There are apparently two versions of the backpack protocol.  This 
driver knows about the version 2 protocol - as is used in the 4x 
and 6x products.  There is no support for the sound hardware that
is included in some models.  It should not be difficult to add 
support for the ATAPI audio play functions and the corresponding 
ioctls.

The driver was developed by reverse engineering the protocol
and testing it on the backpack model 164550.  This model
is actually a stock ATAPI drive packaged with a custom 
ASIC that implements the IDE over parallel protocol.
I tested with a backpack that happened to contain a Goldstar
drive, but I've seen reports of Sony and Mitsumi drives as well.

Before attempting to use the driver, you will need to
create a new device special file.  The following commands will
do that for you:

		mknod /dev/bpcd b 41 0
		chown root:disk /dev/bpcd
		chmod 660 /dev/bpcd

Afterward, you can mount a disk in the usual way:

		mount -t iso9660 /dev/bpcd /cdrom

(assuming you have made a directory /cdrom to use as a mount point).

The driver will attempt to detect which parallel port your
backpack is connected to.  If this fails for any reason, you
can override it by specifying a port on the LILO command line
(for built in drivers) or the insmod command (for drivers built
as modules).   If your drive is on the port at 0x3bc, you would
use one of these commands:

		LILO:	   bpcd=0x3bc

		insmod:    insmod bpcd bp_base=0x3bc

The driver can detect if the parallel port supports 8-bit
transfers.  If so, it will use them.  You can force it to use
4-bit (nybble) mode by setting the variable bp_nybble to 1 on
an insmod command, or using the following LILO parameters:

		bpcd=0x3bc,1

(you must specify the correct port address if you use this method.)

There is currently no support for EPP or ECP modes.  Also,
as far as I can tell, the MicroSolutions protocol does not
support interrupts in the 4-bit and 8-bit modes.

MicroSolutions' protocol allows for several drives to be
chained together off the same parallel port.  Currently, this
driver will recognise only one of them.  If you do have more
than one drive, it will choose the one with the lowest id number,
where the id number is the last two digits of the product's
serial number.

It is not currently possible to connect a printer to the chained
port on the BackPack and expect Linux to use both devices at once.
If you need to use this driver together with a printer on the
same port, build both the bpcd and lp drivers as modules.

Keep an eye on http://www.torque.net/bpcd.html for news and
other information about the driver.  If you have any problems
with this driver, please send me, grant@torque.net, some mail 
directly before posting into the newsgroups or mailing lists.