Charles Obler wrote: > --- "Rajko M." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> I'll write article on openSUSE wiki about parallel >> port scanner installation, >> but I have no ZIP drive and I can't do much to >> rescue information how to >> install them. Your experience can help to people >> like you to give second life >> to their ZIP drives. >> >> -- >> Regards, >> Rajko. >> > > > Wow! I HAVE a parallel port scanner with M$ driver > disk. I tried to find a way to get the scanner to > work with Linux, but finally gave up. > > When you write the article, it will be very helpful to > me! Thanks! > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's > Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. > http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222 >
It turned out to be very easy to make my 100 MB Parallel port zip drive work. Here are 6 simple steps along with some comments.... 1. From a root shell, run modprobe ppa and modprobe imm. One of them should work to install the drivers for your parallel port zip drive. ( I guess "install the drivers" is accurate?? I am a little fuzzy as to just what it is that modprobe does. I'm even more fuzzy about what insmod does.) For me, imm did not work, but ppa did. My research showed that imm only works for newer drives. Mine is REAL old. I don't really understand why, but when running modprobe, the results of the modprobe command are not shown in the terminal window. Goofy linux. Instead you have to go look at var/log/messages to see the results of the execution of the command. One of them should produce messages indicating the parallel port zip drive has been found. The messages will also tell you what device has been created. This will be an entry in the /dev folder. Once I ran modprobe ppa, a new /dev/sda4 folder appeared. Make a note of the folder name. 2. Create a mount point. I added a folder named zip100.0 to /media.... what I ended up was this.... /media/zip100.0. This becomes the place where the directory of the zip drive will be placed when you get the kernel talking to the hardware. 3. Modify /etc/fstab. This ties the device to the mount point. I modified fstab by adding the following line.... /dev/sda4 /media/zip100.0 vfat auto,user,exec,sync 0 0 This tells the kernel to tie the device (/dev/sda4) to the mount point (/media/zip100.0). It also says that the drive will be formatted using FAT, that it should be automatically mounted (which did not work so you might just as well put in noauto instead), that any user can mount the drive, that you can execute binaries, and that the mount occurs synchronously. 4. Now it is time to mount the drive. Everything up to now is setting up the plumbing to allow you to mount. Stuff a zip disk in the drive, preferably one with data on it. >From a shell, type "mount /media/zip100.0" Now you should see the directory of the disk in /media/zip100.0. Isn't linux wonderful? And so easy too! When you are done, issue the command "umount /media/zip100.0". You will not be able to eject the disk until you unmount it. Note, unmount is "umount" not "unmount". 5. There are only two problems remaining. The first is that it sucks to have to enter "modprobe ppa" or "modprobe imm" every time you boot. To fix this, in /etc/init.d/boot.local, add either "modprobe ppa" or "modprobe imm". This will cause the command to be automatically executed at boot time. 6. The remaining problem is that you might wish there was an icon on your desktop you could click to view the drive contents in Konqueror. It turns out to be surprisingly easy to add this. Right click on the desktop. Select Create New and then Link to Device and then Zip Device. In the Devices tab, select the device (/dev/sda4) and you are done. An icon will be created. How to test your new zip drive installation.... Stuff a disk in the drive. Click the new icon on the desktop. Konqueror should come up with the drive contents. You should be able to add and delete files and folders. When you are done, right click on the icon and select either eject or unmount. Eject should unmount the drive and then eject it. For me eject did not always do the eject but it did always unmount it. You can always eject it manually. Problems. For some reason modprobe ppa did not work at first. Or maybe it did but I didn't know enough about what to look for because the result was in messages. I'm not sure what happened there. Also sometimes, the whole thing stops working and you cannot read or unmount or eject. I had to reboot when this happened. Restarting KDE did not work. I hope this helps. Unfortunately I no longer have my zip drive or any disks. I only had the system long enough to see if any old disks I had laying around had any useful data on them. I will still try to help, especially in the short term while my memory is still good! HA! Clark -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
