I recently had problems setting up my Zip drive, but got it working after
some trial and error; maybe this will get you started.
My setup: Slackware 3.5 (Linux 2.0.35) on a Dell Inspiron 3000. I doubt
that setting up a Zip drive on an Inspiron 7000 or any other machine, for
that matter, is much different.
The following is a brief account of how you *might* persuade a parallel
port Iomega Zip drive to work if you're getting messages like
ppa: init_module: Device or resource busy
when you run
insmod ppa
or the boot messages reveal that your zip drive is not being detected:
scsi: 0 hosts
scsi: detected total
I had these problems at least. The ``Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO'' by Kyle Dansie
contains a lot of detailed information about setting up the zip drive.
Read that first. Make sure the zip drive contains a disk before asking ppa
to detect it. Run
lsmod
to see what modules are loaded. I had the lp (parallel port printer) module
loaded, which I assumed was giving me the ``device or resource busy''
message. However, running
rmmod lp
and then retrying insmod ppa still gave the ``device or resource busy''
message. Running
cat /proc/interrupts
showed that IRQ 7 was not being used. So I recompiled the kernel, making
the following changes:
SCSI Support:
scsi support = y [was = n]
scsi disk support = y [was = n]
SCSI Low-Level Drivers:
Iomega parallel port zip drive scsi support = m [was = n]
Character Devices:
Parallel printer support = m [no change]
Retrying insmod ppa still gave the ``device or resource busy'' message.
My BIOS setup had the Parallel Port set to PnP OS. I changed this to
Enabled: it now reports
mode = ECP
Base I/O address = 378
Interrupt = IRQ 7
DMA channel = DMA 3
I then edited my /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file, commenting out the line
/sbin/modprobe lp
and uncommenting the line
/sbin/modprobe ppa ppa=0x378
[I added ppa=0x378 myself; maybe it's unnecessary.] Finally, per the Red
Hat FAQ 9.9 (``Problems with the parallel port zip drive), I added the
following line to my /etc/conf.modules file
alias scsi_hostadapter ppa
Now, I retried insmod ppa, running dmesg to see if anything was
detected. This time the zip drive was finally recognized, coming up as
/dev/sda4. Everything now worked as ``expected'', with the drive
mounted with
mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zip
I haven't tried adding insmod ppa to one of the boot files. I assume this
works? Was ALL the above needed? Probably not. If anyone has any better
suggestions or if this works for you...
Paul
On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Rigault, Philippe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does anybody have experience installing a ZIP drive on a Inspiron
> 7000 ? I am running RedHat 5.2.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Philippe Rigault
>
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