Zip Drive Help Needed

[equant]

The thread about booting a mac+ with a zip drive got my interest in booting off of a zip drive. So far, I can't get my SE to see the zip drive, and I need some help.

(1) The working status of the zip drive is unknown. It *is* a SCSI drive. The power light comes on. It accepts 100MB discs, the amber light flashes a bit. The disks eject when I hit eject.

(2) I've tried using 4 different DB25 cables between the Zip drive and the SE. 3 of them where male/female and required a gender changer. They are not null-modem, but I don't know that they aren't serial cables lacking some of the pins, etc. None worked.

(3) I've used a couple different 100MB zip disks.

(4) Systems 6.0.5 and 6.0.8 were tried.

(5) The SE's SCSI port is known to work.

(6) I put a SC20 between the ZIp drive and the SE so that I was using cables known to be meant to work for scsi connections. The SE saw the SC20 but not the Zip drive. (I don't know that I have verified that the cable between the zip drive and the SC20 works, so that's my next thing to test - ie test the SC20 by itself with each SCSI cable so I know they all work).

(7) Same as above, but used an old external CD Drive. The SE saw neither drive.

( 8) I tried various combinations of the SCSI ID and termination switch on the ZIP drive.

Anyone have any tips, or insight?

Thanks,

Nathan

 

[MacTCP]

Hard Disk Toolkit 1.7.6 has helped me with this type of Zip problem.

 

[Charlieman]

The thread about booting a mac+ with a zip drive got my interest in booting off of a zip drive. So far, I can't get my SE to see the zip drive, and I need some help.
(1) The working status of the zip drive is unknown. It *is* a SCSI drive. The power light comes on. It accepts 100MB discs, the amber light flashes a bit. The disks eject when I hit eject.

(2) I've tried using 4 different DB25 cables between the Zip drive and the SE. 3 of them where male/female and required a gender changer. They are not null-modem, but I don't know that they aren't serial cables lacking some of the pins, etc. None worked.

I believe that your cables are not D-25 SCSI cables. Serial cables just won't work. You need the blue cable that Iomega originally provided or a similar one from another SCSI peripheral provider (CMS definitely sold one in the Plus/IIgs days).

The main clue is in point 1 where you say that the eject button works on the Zip drive. If the drive was being recognised correctly by the Mac, the eject button would be disabled (ejection is handled in software by the Mac).

 

[alk]

Additionally, the Zip drive requires drivers to run correctly on Mac OS. Iomega shipped a special "Disk Tools" disk that had the appropriate drivers on it so that when inserted in the drive at boot time, the host Mac would recognize the disk. You could then install the full Iomega Zip drivers.

There is an Iomega Guest application which loads drivers after boot time so that if you've connected a Zip drive after you booted the host Mac (naughty boy!), you could run the app and mount the inserted Zip disk. Dunno if it works with System 6, though. I know for sure it works with 7.5 as I have run it there many times. I never played around much with System 6.

Peace,

Drew

 

[equant]

I had a feeling that was the case with the DB25 cables.

Using two centronics/db25 cables with a scsi device in the middle should work to hook up a zip drive to a mac right? The scsi in the middle shouldn't need to even be on right?

I don't have the Iomega Zip Tools disk. I'm guessing I can google the drivers online and put them in my system folder. Right?

How can a mac boot off of a zip disk if it needs the drivers to see it?

Thanks,

Nathan

 

[equant]

ok, I found the mac plus & zip drives revisited article. I think I can go from here....

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/pluszip.html

 

[Charlieman]

Using two centronics/db25 cables with a scsi device in the middle should work to hook up a zip drive to a mac right? The scsi in the middle shouldn't need to even be on right?

The cable trick will definitely work. Whether the intermediate device needs to be switched on will depend on SCSI voodoo. In theory, it need not be on.

I don't have the Iomega Zip Tools disk. I'm guessing I can google the drivers online and put them in my system folder. Right?
How can a mac boot off of a zip disk if it needs the drivers to see it?

You don't need the Zip Tools disk or drivers. This is covered in the other thread and associated links.

 

[equant]

Ok, I was able to format the zip drive using lido 7.56, but the process wasn't exactly the same as documented in the above link, even though I was using the same version of lido used by the directions. For example, it didn't ask me about the Eject on Reset.

After the SE boots, it sees the zip drive, and I've got a system folder on the zip drive, but the SE won't boot from the zip drive. According to one of the tools that came with lido, the zip disk is set as bootable.

Anyway, I'm sort of stumped at this point. The zip drive is the highest SCSI device in the chain, and I don't know what else I need to do to get the SE to boot off of the zip disk. If anyone can give me an idea of something to test or check, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Nathan

 

[Charlieman]

Ok, I was able to format the zip drive using lido 7.56, but the process wasn't exactly the same as documented in the above link, even though I was using the same version of lido used by the directions. For example, it didn't ask me about the Eject on Reset.

Thanks for the feedback. Different Macs and different OS versions create different user experiences

After the SE boots, it sees the zip drive, and I've got a system folder on the zip drive, but the SE won't boot from the zip drive. According to one of the tools that came with lido, the zip disk is set as bootable.

Try reblessing the System Folder on the Zip cartridge. Boot from another disk, open the System Folder on the Zip cartridge and then close the window. This should rebless the System Folder.