[akonstam: Re: IOmega Zip drives on a parallel port.]

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 04:16:29PM -0600, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 02:30:30PM -0500, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> 
> > My method to get iomega external zip drives to work under FC1 has
> > been to do: modprobe ppa and then use /dev/sda4.
> 
> I just tried that on one of my computers here (~1100 MHz Athlon, FC2
> as updated) and it worked. One caveat: I always have a ZIP disk in the
> drive when I "modprobe ppa". That shouldn't be required, but doesn't
> hurt.
> 
> > 
> > This used to work and now it doesn't. 
> 
> What doesn't work? What symptoms are you seeing? What error messages?
> Have you tried the same drive and disk on a different computer? Check
> dmesg and /var/log/messages for error messages.
> 
> > In addition zip disks created on an internal iomega drive l
> > associated with /dev/hdd can not be read on the external zip drive.
> 
> Could one or the other drive have gone bad, or the ZIP disk? badblocks
> is your friend here.
> 
> > 
> > Currently most commands say /dev/sda4 is not a block device and when I
> > do a mkfs it starts but when it starts writing blocks the iomega drive
> > sounds like a machine gun which never stops and the process can't be
> > easily killed.
> 
> Er, sounds like a bad drive or disk.
Let me combine the answers to all the questions. It used to just work,
My only complaint was that disks created on the external drive could
not be read on an internal drive also running FC1 on another machine.
Currently it will not mount a zip disk. Error I get is that /dev/sda4
is not a valid block device. When I try to run mkfs.ext2 I get
different inconsistent errors:
1. no such device or address when trying to determine filesyhstem size.
2.It goes the usual formatting through the message:
Superblocks stored on blocks:
	8193 24577 40961 57345 73729

Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and file system accounting information :

In a few seconds the drive starts chattering sounding like a continuous
seeking and the drive must be powered down to stop the process.

Whether error 1 or 2 occurs seems to depend on whether and attempt had
been made to format it previously.

I tried the zip drive on a different computer and got the same
behavior. Out of frustration I bought another drive and got the same
behavior.

I can't understand either the behavior or why it is so inconsistent.

Although at the errors in /var/log/messages it looks like the problem
is that the formatting is going beyond the last sector on the zip disk,
I will have to look into that.

If any one has any thoughts let me know.
-- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
One Trinity Place.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam at trinity.edu

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
One Trinity Place.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam at trinity.edu