From: Jim Lundy Subject: Re: ZIP DRIVE Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 IOMega ZIP Drives A lot of people seem to be asking on the net (as did I myself) about IOMega's great new ZIP Drive, a 100MB removable-media drive costing under $300, and an un-precedented $15-20 for blank 100MB disks. So I figured I'd share my experiences and information on using them on the Amiga. Typical Questions "I just got a ZIP drive, but all of the software is for the Mac or the PC! Where can I get Amiga software?" First, you don't need any special drivers on the Amiga to use just about any SCSI device. The Amiga employs something called a Rigid Disk Block, or RDB for short, which is standard, set-aside area on your hard drive which contains information about all of the partitions on it. When you boot your system, it reads this RDB and automatically configures and mounts whatever partitions you have. The same is true for ZIP disks. You simply need to get a program like Commodore's HDToolBox to partition your ZIP disks and write an RDB onto them. If you are using a non-Commodore controller, chances are it came with similar partitioning and setup software. See below for specific information using Commodore's program. "You can buy blank ZIP disks, but they're formatted Mac or PC. Which do I get?" It doesn't really matter because you're going to format them anyway. Unless you are using CrossDOS and/or CrossMAC and wish to use PC or Mac formatted ZIP disks and it's important that they're already formatted for you, then it makes no difference. "What do I need to use a ZIP drive?" You need: A SCSI controller - Amiga 3000's have built in SCSI controllers - Must have a DB25 connector for hooking up the drive. Most controllers do; If yours doesn't, you can still use a ZIP drive, but will need a special cable. Consult the manufacturer of your controller; It's "beyond the scope of this manual". SCSI device ID 5 or ID 6 must not be in use - the ZIP drive can only be toggled as either ID 5 or ID 6. "Does AmiBack work with ZIP drives?" Sure does. You can either save backups as an AmigaDOS file on a formatted ZIP disk, or write directly to a ZIP disk (note that this destroys everything on the disk). Either method works great. Formatting ZIP Disks for the Amiga Once you have everything hooked up, which we won't go into here, you're ready to format some disks! The following information is for Commodore's HDToolBox program which can be found on your Workbench 2.x or 3.x install disk. You do have to keep a couple of things in mind, no matter what HD partitioner you're using: All your Zip disks should be paritioned and otherwise setup the same - The Amiga is not quite good at removable media yet, and isn't smart enough to handle disk changing if your disks have different partitions or device names. You can make multiple partitons, but the above note still applies! Make everything the same! All your Zip disks should have the same partition name(s). This is different from the volume name, which is the name of the disk as it appears on Workbench, which you are free to change. Preparing a ZIP disk 1. Load up HDToolbox - If you have an Amiga 3000 or a Commodore SCSI controller, just double click on the program. If you are using a 3rd party controller, you must first edit the icon and add a tooltype called "SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=xxx.device" where xxx.device is the name of your SCSI controller's device, like "suprascsi.device". Consult your manual to find this out. 2. Click on your ZIP drive in the list; It should come up something like "IOMEGA ZIP 100" on either device ID 5 or 6. 3. Select it and then click on PARTITION DRIVE. 4. Create your partitions and set them up to your heart's desire. I use one single partition that takes up the whole disk (2047 cylinders). Turn off the "Bootable" flag unless you're really trying to make a bootable ZIP disk (which does work fine, by the way). 5. Click on "OK" to return to the main screen. The "Status" column should now read "Changed", and the button "SAVE CHANGES TO DRIVE" should now be active. 6. Click on SAVE CHANGES TO DRIVE, and exit the program. 7. Reboot your computer. 8. WHen Workbench loads, you should now have a "ZIP:NDOS" icon on your Workbench (although it might say something else, depending on what you named the partition inside HDToolBox, in which case it'll be that name + :NDOS". 9. Single-click the icon, and then go up to the "Icons" pulldown menu and select "Format Disk", and proceed to let Workbench format the disk. Viola! You can now use your ZIP disk like anything else. Note that without a mountlist entry that gets called in your startup, in order for the system to recognize the ZIP drive, a disk must be in the drive when the machine is booted so that the Amiga can get all of the information off the RDB. Practical Tests I used DiskSpeed when I originaly got the drive to test it's speed. The numbers came up fairly horrible as far as read/write speed goes, but I've personally found the drive to perform much better than those numbers. It's still a slow drive; It's not meant to replace your hard drive. But it's perfectly adequate for most uses; Storing all of your MODs on, or graphics, or fonts, etc. I personally am using AmiFileSafe (AFS) which is an incredible new filing system from Fourth Level Development. Among other things, AFS: Is much more effecient than FFS - extremely fast Cannot be invalidated - no more "Drive Not Validated" messages after a crash I have all of my ZIP disks formatted with AFS instead of FFS which is a tremendous speed increase. Fourth Level Development is also coming out with some added software for removable media drives which will allow you to handle things like disks with different partitioning setups. If you have any other questions, feel free to to send me mail. I'd be happy to try and answer any questions you have; These are great drives. And even if they kind of sucked, which I can't say that they do, it's still hard to pass up because of the cost. IOMega's got a winner. Bob Maple