Hi,
There were a few questions posted last week to the inspiron list about how
to get a Zip drive running, which I tried to respond to, having just
figured it out myself. Since then I had a chance to figure out more
precisely what I'd been doing wrong or what I hadn't found in the Zip
Drive Howto. For those interested, I've attached my original and revised
comments below. And thanks to all who offered me tips in the meantime. As
requested, the comments have been forwarded to the maintainer of the Zip
Drive Howto.
Paul Feehan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Notes on external parallel port Zip drive:
-----------------------------------------
Update: January 18, 1999
------ ----------------
Not all of the steps in my previous notes (see below) were
needed. Recompile the kernel, as indicated there, but then just do the
following:
BIOS: If the Parallel Port is set to PnP OS, change this to either Auto
or Enabled (either worked for me). On my machine, the setting Enabled reports:
mode = ECP
Base I/O address = 378
Interrupt = IRQ 7
DMA channel = DMA 3
This step is important: the Zip drive was not detected with the parallel port
BIOS set to PnP OS and the ppa module loaded upon booting up. Running
insmod ppa, with the parallel port BIOS set to PnP OS will give the
``device or resource busy'' message.
Edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file: Comment out the line
/sbin/modprobe lp
and uncomment the line
/sbin/modprobe ppa
if you want the ppa module to be loaded when booting up. Alternatively,
if the system has already booted,
rmmod lp
insmod ppa
removes the lp module (if loaded) and loads the ppa module. Either should
work. It is not necessary (and caused ppa not to be loaded when I did this)
for ppa=0x378 to be added to the /sbin/modprobe ppa line, contrary to the
RedHat docs. The RedHat FAQ 9.9 (``Problems with the parallel port zip
drive) suggests adding the following line to your /etc/conf.modules file
alias scsi_hostadapter ppa
but I found it unnecessary on my Slackware 3.6 system.
When ppa is loaded, during or after boot, running dmesg shows the Zip drive
being detected. It need not have a Zip disk loaded until /zip is actually
mounted via (for example)
mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zip
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Notes on external parallel port Zip drive:
-----------------------------------------
January 13, 1999
----------------
My setup: Slackware 3.6 (Linux 2.0.35) on a Dell Inspiron 3000
This is a brief account of how you *might* persuade a parallel port Iomega
Zip drive to work if you're getting messages like
ppa.o: 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
The ``Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO'' by Kyle Dansie contains a lot of detailed
information about setting up the zip drive. Make sure the zip drive
contains a disk before asking ppa to detect it. First, 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, giving
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...
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Tomasz Barszczak wrote:
> Paul M.N Feehan wrote:
> > I recently had problems setting up my Zip drive, but got it working after
> > some trial and error; maybe this will get you started.
> [...]
> > The following is a brief account of how you *might* persuade a parallel
> > port Iomega Zip drive to work
> [...details deleted...]
> > Was ALL the above needed? Probably not. If anyone has any better
> > suggestions or if this works for you...
>
> Thanks for this nice summary.
> I have added it to the Inspiron page at http://www.ps.uci.edu/~tomba/inspiron/.
>
> Have you sent this to the Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO maintainer
> Kyle Dansie ([EMAIL PROTECTED])?
> Maybe Kyle can figure out which step was the important one
> and add it to the Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO for the benefit of everyone.
>
> Tomasz http://www.ps.uci.edu/~tomba/
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