Date: Jan 23, 1991 X3T9.2/90-201 Rev 1 To: X3T9.2 Committee (SCSI) From: George Penokie (IBM) Subject: Non-ASCII Characters in Log List Parameters Proposal: The List Parameter under the Logging Option in SCSI-2 is defined as: A Parameter Value which consists of a string of ASCII codes. This seems to be overly restrictive, in that, there is no way to have a List Parameter of non-ASCII codes. A common logging application in disk drives would be to create a list of LBAs at which soft errors have occurred. But under the current SCSI-2 definition of the List Parameter the LBAs would have to be converted to ASCII which does not make sense. To Remedy this oversight we would like to propose that byte 2 bit 1 of the Log Parameter (the control byte) be change from Reserved to a bit which would determine whether the List Parameter was ASCII or binary. Call it LBIN. Description to go into the Log Parameters section of SCSI-3: The LBIN bit is is only valid if the LP is one. If the LP bit is one and the LBIN bit is zero then the list parameter is a string of ASCII graphic codes (i.e., code values 20h through 7Eh). If the LP bit is one and the LBIN bit is one then the list parameter is a list of binary information. Along with the above paragraph the following sentence would be deleted from the third paragraph after table 7-52 in the SCSI-2 rev 10c document: A list parameter is a string of ASCII graphic codes (i.e., codes values 20h through 7Eh).