Test reports

2. progress report: Parallel Zip drive connected to IOBlix (by G. Hinrichsen)

»Progress report/test report: external parallel Zip drive connected to the IOBlix(ZII)

Even, if you say that the data MCA is quite far away with the Amiga, nearly any user will find out one day, that you don't get enough on one disk. The first solution are split program, but if there are read-write errors on the disks the desparation reaches never expected levels.

So it happened in my case, too, because some program, which I downloaded from the Aminet, was larger than the magic 1.44 MB border of the PC drives on the advanced technical college... So I was looking for a reliable, flexible (which means external use for me, because not any computer owns a Zip drive) and, of course, a cheap replacement for floppy disks. So I decided for the parallel Zip drive. There are pros and contras:

Well, I was a bit angry about the high price for the media, but because I looked for a floppy disk replacement and a backup possiblity, you as Amiga user don't need many media. So I packed e.g. my whole system (with LZX) on one medium as backup. An which Amiga user wants to exchange files larger than 95 MB with other Amiga users that often? The price of 95 MB of floppy disks is also higher, not to mention the repeating disk swapping, read/write errors and extremely slow disk drive!

The theme system friendliness is usually no big problem. The CPU is quite busy (approx. 80%), but the Zip drive wasn't ever planned as a hard disk replacement. In practical use you can surf in the Internet without any problems and write data to the Zip drive at the same time. Those who want to watch for system friendliness, should get the SCSI type, which is by the way much faster. ist.

Much angrier is, that a parallel port is blocked. But fortunately the port of the Zip drive is led through. This feature can be used with driver revision 37.9 and above. But the use of Zip drive and printer at the same time is a burden for the speed. By the way, there is a small manual included, which hast the problems with the led through port and printers as a theme. It seems, there are some problems with other printers. But it worked fine for me.

A big disadvantage is, that the Zip drive has to be mounted. In practical use you just copy the mount entry to DEVS:DOSDrivers/. But it is a pity, that no bootable Zip disks can be created, it seems, that this is left to the SCSI and IDE devices, only resp. is just possible with the use of a booting floppy disk.

As expected the speed is not quite high. To test the speed I copied a file with a size of 90 MB from my hard disk (SCSI DMA) to the Zip drive. "c:copy Work:90mb zip:". For this I used various file systems.

If you watch the table you see extreme differences. The FastFileSystem proves again, that it doesn't offer, what its name promisses.

Just the SmartFileSystem and CrossDos can earn praise. But CrossDos can only be used limited, because it doesn't support long file names in the Workbench version.

The XFileSystem supports numerous file systems, but it is a flop in matters of speed comparison.

MSD95 supports the FAT16/FAT32, but isn't able to write - on the other hand its speed is higher than XFS. But unfortunately it is not really acceptable.

Wit a bit of malicious glee I compared the result with the comparison-PC. The values varied, it is interesting, that the parallel port had to be used in EPP mode, because with the ECP mode only 38 KB/sec. were possible. Under Windows it wasn't possible to continue with the work, the mouse pointer stuttered, the start menu appeared only after 1 to 2 seconds. It mustn't withheld, that the system of the Amiga is also very busy, but it is possible to set the process "ioblixzip/00" from the pri. 5 to e.g. -1 and become able to resume work without a "busy" system, with all the disadvantages of the data transfer speed of the Zip drive, of course. Under SuSe Linux 6.0 (PC) we measured extreme varying speeds (from approx. 110 KB/sec to 170 KB/sec). On the Amiga the speeds were always constant, even in multiple tests.

But how fast is the Zip drive really? According to the data of the manufacturer max. 25 MB/min., which is approx. 426 KB/sec. But this should be a more theoretical value.

(also read http://www.iomega.com/de/product/zip/zipspec.html)

But the Zip drive has some other abilities, which make it different from a normal floppy disk: write protection, read/write protection, remove the desired protection completely or temporary, low level formatting. Thw wirte protection is done per software, to de-protect it you can ask for a password as well as it is with the read/write protection. There are two kinds how to protect a disk, completely or temporary, which means, that the protection is off as long as it hasn't removed from the drive or it was switched off. If you forgot the password there is only low level format, but then the data are being destroyed.

To get use of the abilities there are Zip tools for the PC & Mac. There are also programs for the Amiga, which can be found in the Aminet. I decided for the ones of Oliver Hitz (disk/misc/zjtools12.lha, because on the one hand it is freeware on the other hand there are two version, one with a comfortable graphical user interface (MUI) and a shell version.

But unfortunately they absolutely perfectly, but I guess, that is due to the ioblixzip.device, because other Zip tools have the same problems. But, if there is no disk inserted, they report, that there was an unprotected disk in the drive. If you enter a disk now, the new status is recognized correctly. This wouldn't be a cause to get excited, if the third program of the bundle would work correctly, which is ZJWatch. The purpose of this commodity to ask for ask for a password, if a disk, which is protected by password, is being inserted. Unfortunately this only works when starting the program, not during disk changes. To de-protect the disk have to do it manually. ZJTools itself works fine.

Result: Apart of the small driver bugs, the Zip drive is also fine with the IOBlix. A little speed with a high processor load can be gotten over, if there is just a small amount of data to be transferred or to make a backup. Also the high price of the Zip disk takes part to that. An external device is useful, if you want to transfer to different computers, which don't all have a Zip drive installed. The alternatives with SCSI or USB bus need the desired controller, but an USB controller for the Amiga is only announced. Those who already have an IOBlix can choose the parallel drive as a cheaper version.

Internet addresses:

Thanks: (in alphabetical order)

Gunter Hinrichsen <frontier.user@gmx.net>«