SCAM and boot devices

[Eddie.Williams]

* From the SCSI Reflector, posted by:
* ewilliam at folsom.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM (Eddie.Williams)
*
On Feb 12, 11:25am, "Lohmeyer, John" wrote:
> Subject: Re: SCAM and boot devices
> * From the SCSI Reflector, posted by:
> * "Lohmeyer, John" <JLOHMEYE at cosmpdaero.ftcollinsco.ncr.com>
> *
> [soapbox on]
> The "right" solution is for the BIOS and OS vendors to solve the problem. 
>  The BIOS guys need to examine the volume labels on all of the mounted media 
> and pick the boot device (or allow the user to pick the boot device as with 
> OS/2's boot manager).  This is more work than just always booting from ID 0 
> or ID 6, but it is necessary to support the Plug-and-Play philosophy.
> 
> The OS vendors need to adopt a more flexible solution to media management 
> than merely assigning drive letters in the physical media order.  Jumbling 
> drive letters is almost as bad as not booting.
> 
> Apple Computer has solved this problem years ago by not using drive letters 
> and instead naming the disk volumes.  It is time for the other OS vendors to 
> borrow this enlightened idea.  I've expressed this thought to several 
> Microsoft people and have always been pushed back with statements like, 
>  'Drive letters are really engrained -- maybe in the product after the one 
> we've working on now'.  Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons PCs remain 
> more difficult to use than Macs.
> [soapbox off]

This only helps for disks.  What about tapes, CDs, printers, etc?  Writing
to the wrong tape could cause some serious problems too.

Eddie Williams
Ed.Williams at ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM
(803) 939-2073