The Sun Coast SoftWorks, Inc. Optical Disk Device Driver is a raw (character) device driver that transparently supports most of the optical disk devices on the market today.

Some highlights of the device driver design are:

1. The device driver recognizes a supported device by its response to the SCSI INQUIRY command and it configures itself to the attached device. If the system supports it, the SCSI bus can be reconfigured "on the fly" and the device driver can handle new (supported) drives correctly. Supported devices can be attached in any combination.
2. The software interface to the drive is the same regardless of the system platform.
3. Most of the drive's SCSI command functionality is accessible in a way that is independent of the drive. This means that applications programmers do not have to be intimately familiar with the specifics of a given drive's SCSI implementation.
4. Rather than set drive modes to a (probably undesireable) default, the drive modes are sensed on open() and a copy is stored so that they can be restored if necessary.
5. Most non-fatal check conditions are handled within the device driver, for example:
   • On MEDIUM CHANGED, the device driver determines the medium type (rewritable or WORM), the medium capacity, and the current volume label.
   • If the drive is NOT READY and a platter is present, the driver issues a spin up and retries the medium access command.
6. All the sectors on optical volumes up to 2TB can be addressed (This is more than enough to handle any optical disk likely to be introduced in the near future).

Utilities are provided with the device driver to sense and set drive modes (odmodes), exercise the drive (odutil), to scan WORM platters (odscan), to determine drive performance (perf), and set the debug and error reporting levels within the device driver (odset).

The Sun Coast SoftWorks, Inc. Jukebox Device Driver transparently supports most of the jukebox devices available today.

Some jukebox device driver highlights are:

1. Supported devices are recognized by their response to the SCSI INQUIRY command and the driver configures itself to the attached devices. If the system supports dynamic reconfiguration, the driver can recognize newly configured devices (assuming that they are supported). Supported devices can be connected in any combination.
2. The device driver provides a device-independent way of determining the jukebox's internal geometry and current state and handling certain operations whose implementations vary widely among the supported jukeboxes (e.g. extending and retracting the mailbox). There is no need to "hard-wire" jukebox parameters in an application program; nor is it necessary for the applications programmer to know the jukebox's SCSI implementation in minute detail.
3. Although most of the SCSI capabilities of the jukebox are accessible through ioctl() commands that automatically handle differences between jukeboxes, the driver provides a pass-through ioctl() to give the application programmer access to jukebox-specific SCSI commands.
4. Most non-fatal check conditions are handled within the device driver and do not require intervention from the application program.

Utilities are provided with the device driver to display the jukebox's internal geometry and current state (jbutil), move platters within the jukebox (jbmove), and set the debug and error reporting levels within the device driver (jbset).

The Sun Coast SoftWorks, Inc. Write Once Filesystem Primitives Library provides an API-based high-level interface that allows the systems integrator, imaging system OEM, or sophisticated end-user to access (commit and retrieve) objects on optical disk volumes. Volumes are self-describing and can be mounted in standalone drives or jukeboxes. Utilities are provided for initializing, importing and exporting volumes.

Major advantages include:

1. Data Integrity:
   • Objects and their metadata are written using WRITE WITH VERIFY. Metadata are written before a commit returns success.
   • The optical volumes are self-describing (all information necessary to access all objects on the disk can be retrieved from the disk).
2. Performance:
   • Objects are written to consecutive sectors so that they can be accessed with a single seek.
   • All outstanding requests for a given volume are satisfied before the volume is removed from the drive.
3. Flexibility:
   • Disks written on any supported platform can be read and written on any other supported platform.
   • Supported jukeboxes and standalone drives can be used in any combination.
   • Volume sizes up to 2 Terabytes (more than enough for the foreseeable future) are supported. There is no limit on the number of volumes that can be tracked.