Re: Zip disk on SCSI

[gareth@vcn.bc.ca (Gareth Jones)]

Louis Cornelio (cornelio@crl5.crl.com) wrote:
: 
: Can anyone tell me how to best set-up a zip dreive disk to use w/ an 
: apple scsi card? I have use of both of these & want to try it out; so fra 
: it seems a little flakey.
: 
: The "check scsi" util that comes w/apple scsi utils says none is 
: connected, but  it does show uo w/ 86. meg free. However, on return to 
: finder I get 2 "device not recognized" errors before I can go on. 

Your Zip disk has two Mac-specific partitions on it. (One is for the Mac
SCSI device driver, the other is for ??). Those are the two "Device not
recognized" messages. "Eject" them when GS/OS asks what you want to do
with them, and you can use the main partition.

The main partition is HFS format. Make sure that you have the HFS patch
installed in your operating system.

A better solution, if you don't expect to use the same Zip disk on a Mac,
is to use Advanced SCSI Utilities (in the System disks) or Chinook SCSI
Utilities 1.5 (freeware) to partition the Zip disk as 3 32 MB ProDOS
partitions.

One problem with using the ZIP disk with an Apple SCSI card is that the
ZIP drive goes to "sleep" after a period (15 min?) of inactivity.
Solutions include "goosing" the drive by manually ejecting and reinserting
it (not an elegant solution), or using a RAMfast card. Apparently, using
the SCSI driver for the Apple Card that was sold by Tulin Technologies
solves a lot of troubles with the Apple card and a Zip drive. Max Jones
(of _Juiced.GS_ magazine) is a fan of that solution. You can get the Tulin
SCSI driver from Mr. Wing Chung (104465.3171@COMPUSERVE.COM) for $20 U.S.

I find that the Zip is a great backup solution. Less good as a replacement
for your hard drive.

Hope this helps.

-Gareth