Re: [TCLUG:626] Iomega Zip Drive

[David Carter <dcarter@winternet.com>]

On Mon, 13 Jul 1998, Christopher Reid Palmer wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Jul 1998, Hans Umhoefer wrote:
> 
> > Unless you have other scsi devices attached to the machine the zip drive 
> > should be /dev/sda4, you just have to mount it and it works like any other
> > filesystem.
> 
> Is this correct? Why would a parallel port device be represented as the
> fourth partition on the first SCSI disk?

The Zip parallel port adapter utilizes a SCSI-to-Parallel-port bridge chip
added on to a standard SCSI zip drive, so once the driver is loaded, it
sees that chip as a SCSI adapter.  It's sda4 because Iomega stupidly
decided that standard DOS formatted zips would have the data partition on
partition 4 (with 1-3 unassigned).  You can repartition and reformat the
disks yourself, but you run the risk of being incompatible with Windows if
you do.

> And what if you *do* have other SCSI disks? (I'm getting my new PC put
> together, and it will have all SCSI disks, including a SCSI Zip, so I'm
> kinda anxious about this...).

The SCSI zip drives can either use ID 5 or ID 6.  So, you just see where
it falls in the chain, and use the appropriate device.  It sees the zip
drive as a disk drive, so you just figure out where it goes in your chain.
(I have two hard drives on ID 0 and ID 6, and my zip is on ID 5, so my zip
is /dev/sdb.  It's pretty easy, actually.)  If you're still confused, ask
me about it on IRC sometime.

	David