Howto: Getting An Atapi Zip Drive To Work <br />

Title: Getting an ATAPI ZIP drive to work
Description: Problems you may encounter

http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikka.php?...IZIPdrivetowork

Post any comments / questions / etc. in here.

o.k.
so the howto is wrong almost entirely.
During a small discussion I was shown a web page where another user's howto is making similar assumptions. however, that howto is wrong too.

Unless something dramatically changed, zip drive is (in UNIX world in general) considered SCSI device. The same rule applies to kernel 2.6.
In case of doubts, check kernel config file.

to test zip load
modprobe imm
or the old one (ZIP 100)
modprobe ppa

in the fstab one should add
/dev/sdb4 /media/zip auto noauto,user 0 0

which is fourth partition of first scsi device

in other words also this line in fstab is wrong:
/dev/hdb /media/zip subfs fs=auto,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,sync 0 0

because it assumes ide device instead of SCSI. So /dev/hdb entryto /etc/fstab will make it only unstable if working at all.


Unless there is official linux/kernel howto pointing to different than scsi zip device, the above howto (and a lot of other users howtos) is wrong.
You can also find users that set ide (hdb) entry in the /etc/fstab and either they have problems with stability or can't mount zip drive at all or zip drive is not fully functional: for example, unable to eject zip disk.

references:
http://howtos.linux.com/howtos/ZIP-Drive.shtml
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/ZIP-Drive.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWT...IP-Install.html
The last one is quite old, but still valid because nothing changed

Broch

this howto deals with ATAPI zip drves, not SCSI ones - and my preliminary info seems to suggest other people have got it working this way too...

It is possible to mount these as IDE devices. In fact the first link you quote itself says

4.5 ATAPI version
This drive is described at http://www.iomega.com/product/zip/zipatapi.html
There was an IDE version of the drive produced for a while. I think that for the most part this has been replaced by the ATAPI version.
Donald Stidwell sent in these comments on the ATAPI version. Thanks Don.
I use an ATAPI Zip drive and it works with both 2.0.32 and 2.0.33 kernels. I've used it under both RH 5.0 and OpenLinux 1.2 (my current used distribution). To get it to work under OpenLinux, I just enabled ATAPI floppy support in the kernel. OpenLinux does not have this support compiled in by default.
No other drivers are needed. It will mount as an extended partition on partition 4. I.E, mine mounts on HDB4. I mount it under /mnt/zip as noauto, although I don't suppose there would be any real problem with automounting. I just wonder about ejecting disks. I always dismount the drive before ejecting a cartridge.
There are more detailed instructions for the ATAPI install in the Linux Gazette May 1998 issue. See the 2 cent tip section.
* * <url url="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue28/lg_tips28.html#atapi">
*

4.6 IDE version
I have not used the IDE version. Eric Backus sent in these comments. Thanks Eric.
I have one of these. It came with my Gateway 2000 computer a year ago. I think most of these were shipped by large OEM companies like this, before the ATAPI version of the ZIP drive was available.
The good news about this drive: no kernel modules or modifications are needed to support it. It looks to the kernel like an IDE hard drive. It worked for me with no effort with kernel 2.0.31 and 2.0.32.
The bad news about this drive: because it doesn't use ATAPI, you can't use the SCSI-to-ATAPI translation, which means you can't use mtools to write-protect disks (or to eject them, for that matter).

Well, this is not that obvious, check your kernel first. Your explanation comes form windows world. For UNIX (and linux) all ZIP drivers are considered SCSI

The bad news about this drive: because it doesn't use ATAPI, you can't use the SCSI-to-ATAPI translation, which means you can't use mtools to write-protect disks (or to eject them, for that matter).

That was a problem then, imm and ppa modules are in SCSI section. You will need also scsi support built in kernel. If you don't believe me simply built kernel without these saci modules and scsi support and try to access zip drive. See if you can.

My explanation comes from the FIRST link you posted broch! Not the Windows world. ATAPI zip drives can be installed as atapi-ide devices, not everything has to go through SCSI emulation

http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/6850

Mentions the only disadvantage of doing it this way is using automount


Also ppa and imm are for Parallel ports according to this link http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Zip_Drive

IOMEGA parallel port (ppa - older drives) = Y/M IOMEGA parallel port (imm - newer drives) = Y/Mx

What you need to do is say yes to the option CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI. When this is set, you will
treat the IDE ATAPI drive just like a SCSI drive, except without the SCSI card and all that other

and this is /etc/fstab from the article you have mentioned:
Put a line in that file that looks
like

/dev/sda4 /mnt/zip auto user,noauto 0 0


and that is what I was suggesting from the beginning

My searches of the Suse lists and other people with this say

Parallel port and Scsi - use scsi emulation

Atapi - can use either scsi emulation or mount as atapi die devices using ide-floppy a la LS 120s

Yes broch - but you were saying prion was wrong - when all he has done is detail the ide-floppy way of doing it

well I think that you will find al lot of resources where user's are complaining about "LS120 way" as soon as they set scsi emulation it works. Beside that is the kernel way of dealing with ZIP.

Unless Linus or ZIP devices maintainer will say otherwise, ZIP should be sat in SCSI emulation mode.