help with IDE zip drive

Well, the time has come to finally try and get the zip drive that's been
sitting idly in this computer ever since I install Debian Sid about 6
months ago, up and running. I've never gotten it to work so far, having
tried the traditional stuff that always worked before (mount /dev/hdd
/zip, making an entry in /etc/fstab to that effect). I worked at it a bit
half-heartedly when I first set up the machine, then gave up. Now my wife
wants me to format some zip disks for her, so I need to find out what the
problem is and get it useable. This is an IDE Zip 100 drive - nothing out
of the ordinary. It's the slave on the secondary IDE channel. It worked
fine under the previous OS I had installed on this machine (Libranet - a
Debian knock-off). I didn't move any cables or jumpers when I removed
Libranet and installed Sid. But now, it's just stopped working. When I
issue the command mount /dev/hdd /zip I get /dev/hdd: Invalid argument
mount: /dev/hdd: can't read superblock. The drive physically works since,
when I insert a disk the light does on and it spins up. I can't totally
rule out hardware failure, but I'm not looking at that seriously now since
it worked fine up to the upgrade. I recall looking at dmesg oputput and
seeing the drive show up as an IDE zip device at /dev/hdd - so I can't see
that I'm doing something wrong there. Is there a way to double check?
I've been convinced that I'm being foiled by devfs, but that's only an
idea and may simply owe to my poor understanding of devfs and how to work
with it (are you really even supposed to work with it?). I'm running the
2.6.5 kernel, but the drive was not working under previous 2.4.x kernels I
ran either. Any help anyone could give on finally getting this drive
working would be greatly appreciated.

James

PS Yes, I am issuing the mount command as root, and the directory /zip
does exist. I have 4 IDE devices in this machine: hda is a 10GB IDE hard
drive, hdb is a CD/DVD ROM drive, hdc is a 20GB IDE hard drive and hdd is
the zip drive.
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Re: help with IDE zip drive

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, James Miller wrote:

> Well, the time has come to finally try and get the zip drive that's b=
een
> sitting idly in this computer ever since I install Debian Sid about 6
> months ago, up and running. I've never gotten it to work so far, hav=
ing
> tried the traditional stuff that always worked before (mount /dev/hdd
> /zip, making an entry in /etc/fstab to that effect). I worked at it =
a bit

Zip PC disks come from the factory with a VFAT filesystem on partition
4 (e.g. hdd4). If you used to address it as hdd, I guess you used to
use ide_floppy but no longer have that in your kernel. With a single
partition, you might get away with trying to mount it as hdd4, or you
might not (it's years since I tried ide_floppy, and quite a long time
since I used my zip disks, but my memory is that ide_floppy appeared to
see all the data (from hdd1, in my case, because I repartitioned with
fdisk before running mke2fs).

Ken
--=20
das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce

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Re: help with IDE zip drive

Greetings James: No Zip guru and bear with me if this old man doesn't
remember exactly - but this is what we do with our Zip250, presuming
the 100 same:

Fetched iwclcontainer-lnx-x86-10.tgz from iomega.com and install it.
Invoking iw ? lists the flags with -ext2 the one used to change the
preformatted disks from fat to ext2.. -f alone formats with the fat
fs.. A fairly good set of doco's included in the package.. Apparently
iOmega wants to work with Linux..

First though the kernel must be advised about the drive with; I use
Grub and enter on boot hdc=ide-scsi the secondary master IDE spot.
I believe append hdc=ide-scsi works with Lilo and I suspect you can
hard compile the kernel if you wish, not sure.. Thence install the
module ide-scsi, as the software wants to talk to a scsi drive, not an
IDE drive so it has to be emulated.. A simple mount /dev/sda4 then
mounts it and you can carry on... Why iOmega selected sda4 for this,
no one seems to know but it's a fact, at least here.. I seem to
remember you can format it as sda_ forget the details. I keep the
defaults if possible..

If the drives fs is kept fat then you can work with it using mtools
as z: drive, changing a conf file in /etc, forget the exact name off
hand.. I bought blanks from eBay formatted for the Mac, because they
were cheaper for some reason, and reformatted them ext2 or fat...
If you use it for NFS, there are other details..

HTH. Blast back for any other details I may have missed.. Good luck.

Hal - in Terra Alta, WV - Slackware GNU/Linux 9.0 (2.4.20)

Anyone can pile complexity upon complexity;
only a genius can truly simplify..

On 06-08, James Miller wrote:
> Well, the time has come to finally try and get the zip drive that's been
> sitting idly in this computer ever since I install Debian Sid about 6
> months ago, up and running. I've never gotten it to work so far, having
> tried the traditional stuff that always worked before (mount /dev/hdd
> /zip, making an entry in /etc/fstab to that effect). I worked at it a bit
> half-heartedly when I first set up the machine, then gave up. Now my wife
> wants me to format some zip disks for her, so I need to find out what the
> problem is and get it useable. This is an IDE Zip 100 drive - nothing out
> of the ordinary. It's the slave on the secondary IDE channel. It worked
> fine under the previous OS I had installed on this machine (Libranet - a
> Debian knock-off). I didn't move any cables or jumpers when I removed
> Libranet and installed Sid. But now, it's just stopped working. When I
> issue the command mount /dev/hdd /zip I get /dev/hdd: Invalid argument
> mount: /dev/hdd: can't read superblock. The drive physically works since,
> when I insert a disk the light does on and it spins up. I can't totally
> rule out hardware failure, but I'm not looking at that seriously now since
> it worked fine up to the upgrade. I recall looking at dmesg oputput and
> seeing the drive show up as an IDE zip device at /dev/hdd - so I can't see
> that I'm doing something wrong there. Is there a way to double check?
> I've been convinced that I'm being foiled by devfs, but that's only an
> idea and may simply owe to my poor understanding of devfs and how to work
> with it (are you really even supposed to work with it?). I'm running the
> 2.6.5 kernel, but the drive was not working under previous 2.4.x kernels I
> ran either. Any help anyone could give on finally getting this drive
> working would be greatly appreciated.
>
> James
>
> PS Yes, I am issuing the mount command as root, and the directory /zip
> does exist. I have 4 IDE devices in this machine: hda is a 10GB IDE hard
> drive, hdb is a CD/DVD ROM drive, hdc is a 20GB IDE hard drive and hdd is
> the zip drive.
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
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Re: help with IDE zip drive

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 13:47:51 -0500 (CDT)
From: James Miller
To: Hal MacArgle
Subject: Re: help with IDE zip drive

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Hal MacArgle wrote:

> First though the kernel must be advised about the drive with; I use
> Grub and enter on boot hdc=ide-scsi the secondary master IDE spot.
> I believe append hdc=ide-scsi works with Lilo and I suspect you can
> hard compile the kernel if you wish, not sure.. Thence install the
> module ide-scsi, as the software wants to talk to a scsi drive, not an
> IDE drive so it has to be emulated.. A simple mount /dev/sda4 then
> mounts it and you can carry on... Why iOmega selected sda4 for this,
> no one seems to know but it's a fact, at least here.. I seem to
> remember you can format it as sda_ forget the details. I keep the
> defaults if possible..

You're a lifesaver, Hal! Looks like the wisdom of age wins this one! I
never would have gotten it through my thick young skull to try mounting
the thing as a scsi device (actually, I did think of that, but just as
quickly dismissed it as a foolhardy act of desperation). After reading
you post, I issued mount /dev/sda4 /zip and WALLA! (I think that's the
American pronunciation and spelling) it works! I now have a mountable zip
disk. I guess it was just too simple. Thanks so much for your input on
this one, and to others who contributed as well. It looks like scsi
emulation really is the key: but with the 2.6.x kernels, I thought scsi
emulation had been done away with? A mystery for another day, I suppose.

Take care, James
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