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8.1.2: The meaning of the digit suffix (drive selection)

For each kind of tape device provided by zftape there are four different device nodes in the `/dev/' subdirectory which's names only differ in the last letter which is a digit between `0' and `3'.

These four different device names come from the fact that it is in principle possible to connect four different hardware devices to a floppy controller. Often one refers to these hardware devices as drive A to drive D. Indeed, when programming the floppy controller, one has to address the first floppy drive (not floppy tape drive) as drive A, the second as drive B. So this is the root of this naming habit.

For floppy tape drives it normally doesn't matter which drive selection (`A', `B', `C' or `D') one uses to program the floppy controller, although there are some drives that have jumpers to configure which selection the tape drive expects. So, `0' maps to `treating the tape drive as drive A' and so forth. Normally there is no difference at all between those tape devices because the floppy tape drives ignore the floppy drive selection method but are woken up by sending special commands to the tape drive.


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