IDE HDD passthrough

[Alistair Grundy]

Hi, I am new to Linux and have mandrake 7.1 installed per Sams Teach Yourself Linux in 24 hrs. At some later date I plan to move to Red Hat.

I write IDE test code and need to be able to send all commands to the HDD (Secondary Master). I need a layer similar to ASPII for SCSI which will allow me to construct cdb's for each command (e.g. Identify Drive 0xEC) send the cdb and get the data buffer back. Is there anything available or can someone provide me with an example of using passthrough.

Is the above even possible or will I need a specially written device driver.

Any help would be much appreciated, philosophy or code.

[Rüpel]

linux is about open source. just install the kernel-sources (usually located under /usr/source/linux-blabla)

since you are doing pretty hardcore programming stuff the kernel seems to be the place for you. accessing IDE-drives directly sounds to me, as if you'd like to join IBM and write some DB2-low-level cache function ;)

maybe there is an easier way - but i don't know any (which means nothing ;) - i'm just a noob)