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The architecture ot SCSI permits a wide variety of devices to coexist on the SCSI bus, usually linked to the host with a single SCSI adapter. Operating system support for each peripheral device is normally achieved through a device driver or utility program. Because of the tremendous flexibility of SCSI, however, no single device driver or program can support all possible SCSI peripherals. Instead, separate drivers are needed for each major type of installed SCSI device. These drivers must be able to share the host adapter hardware. There is no standard hardware interface in the PC compatible arena, so these drivers must also be able to work with a broad range of host adapter hardware, from highly intelligent coprocessors to primitive interface chips. A standard SCSI programming interface is clearly needed to insulate SCSI device drivers and utilities from the host adapter hardware interface.
One approach to such an interface has been taken by ANSI, which has defined a programming interface called CAM (Common Access Method) The CAMCORE software, which resides in and is unique to each model of host adapter, provides a standard...