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A few questions about the zip drive on an old compact mac:
Is it possible to hook up a 250mb scsi zip drive on to a mac Se/30?
Does any SCSI 100mb zip drive work with the Se/30?
Thanks
SCSI ZIp Drive
Started by nahuelmarisi, Oct 06 2007 03:42 AM
18 replies to this topic
#2
LCGuy
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- 6502
LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
- LocationSydney, Australia
Posted 06 October 2007 - 06:08 AM
1. Yes, but you must have System 7. The Zip 250, unlike the 100, doesn't support System 6
2. Yes.
2. Yes.
#3
Charlieman
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- 68000
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- LocationLeicester, UK
Posted 06 October 2007 - 06:22 AM
LCGuy said
1The Zip 250, unlike the 100, doesn't support System 6
In what way do you mean that the Zip 250 does not work with System 6?
#4
nahuelmarisi
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- 6502
- LocationYork, UK, EU
Posted 06 October 2007 - 07:40 AM
Well I'm interested in it working with system 6 if possible. DOes the 250 work with it then?
And if so, where are the drivers? are the the same ones?
I'm interested in booting my plus from the zip drive if possible
#5
nahuelmarisi
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- 6502
- LocationYork, UK, EU
Posted 06 October 2007 - 07:42 AM
Well I'm interested in it working with system 6 if possible. DOes the 250 work with it then?
And if so, where are the drivers? are the the same ones?
I'm interested in booting my plus from the zip drive if possible
#6
tomlee59
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- 68000
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- LocationPalo Alto, California
Posted 06 October 2007 - 11:40 AM
What LCguy is saying
is that you cannot use a zip 250 with a system 6 machine. There are no
sys6-compatible zip250 drivers (at least AFAIK). So your options are:
1) Use system 7 to allow use of a zip 250
2) Stay with system 6, but you'll then be limited to using zip100.
#7
Mac128
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- 68020
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Posted 06 October 2007 - 01:01 PM
The SCSI Zip 100 will
boot my Dove MacSnap SCSI equipped Mac 512Ke from System .97 and Finder
1.0, once formatted with Driver 4.2 under 6.0.x
So it should boot the Mac SE all the way back to its original system
software.
I love backward compatibility.
Could the Zip 250 be formatted under System 7, then used with System 6
in the same way I can use my Zip 100 disks under earlier systems?
Not to hijack this thread, but I would much prefer a ZIP drive inside a
SCSI capable Mac rather than a hard drive to make it quieter and would
require only minor modification to the SE case in order to insert the
ZIP disks. In the case of the SE, my understanding is that analogue
board is much sturdier than the Plus board in terms of heat resistance. I
wonder if without the hard drive you could turn off the fan, or at
least put it on a temperature controlled switch and the existing
ventilation would be mostly adequate.
#8
aftermac
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- 6502
- LocationDetroit
Posted 06 October 2007 - 01:09 PM
Mac128 said
Not to hijack this thread, but I would much prefer a ZIP drive inside a SCSI capable Mac rather than a hard drive to make it quieter and would require only minor modification to the SE case in order to insert the ZIP disks. In the case of the SE, my understanding is that analogue board is much sturdier than the Plus board in terms of heat resistance. I wonder if without the hard drive you could turn off the fan, or at least put it on a temperature controlled switch and the existing ventilation would be mostly adequate.
Not to foster your unintended hijacking, but that's not a half-bad idea.
#9
Charlieman
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- 68000
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- LocationLeicester, UK
Posted 06 October 2007 - 01:42 PM
System level drivers
(INITs, extensions) are not required for hard disks or SCSI removeable
drives (Bernoulli, Zip, Syquest). System level drivers provide
additional functionality (on the fly ejection and re-insertion, for
example), but a Mac should recognise any SCSI removeable drive if it is
present on startup. If that fails, use SCSI Probe or a similar utility,
and remove all Iomega INITs or extensions. Any decent third party disk
formatter will operate on a Zip or similar removeable disk. Formatters
put a "driver" on the disk but that driver is different from a system
level INIT or extension.
Zips are more awkward to deal with. Iomega presumed that they knew more
about SCSI disks than others, and the system level driver (INIT) looks
at the disk to check whether it has been formatted in the approved
fashion. Thus a Zip 250 cartridge will not work with the System 6 INIT
because Zip 250s did not exist at the time. If you want to persevere
with the System 6 Iomega software, open the INIT in a binary editor and
change the references to "Zip 100" to "Zip 250". Or save time by
removing the Iomega INIT and by using a third party formatter (System 6
and 7 compatible!) for your Zip disks alongside a SCSI control panel.
#10
nahuelmarisi
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- 6502
- LocationYork, UK, EU
Posted 06 October 2007 - 02:01 PM
Basicallly, if I
understand correctly, I could get a zip 250 mb and use it as a zip 100
(ie using its driver) on system 6?
I don't mind if it just works as a zip 100 on system 6. I'm trying to
decide what to get, if I zip 100 or a zip 250. I want it to be able to
boot system 6, and well I can use it as a zip 250 in older macs.
I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but, basically using the zip
100 driver on system zip allows the zip 250 to work as if it was a zip
100 unit?
Apple IIe, Apple
Lisa 2, Mac 128k/512k upgraded to Plus 4 mb, Mac Plus 2 mb, Mac Plus 4
mb, Mac Plus 2.5Mb, Mac Classic 4 mb, Mac Classic 4 mb, Mac Classic 2
mb, Mac SE 4 mb, Mac SE/30 2mb, Mac SE/30 128mb,Mac Classic II 4 mb,
Powerbook 100, powerbook 145, powerbook 170, powerbook 190cs, iMac g3
Rev B, macbook, iPod Touch
Non apple: Amiga 600HD, Commodore 64c, BBC Master 128
Non apple: Amiga 600HD, Commodore 64c, BBC Master 128
#11
tomlee59
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- 68000
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- LocationPalo Alto, California
Posted 06 October 2007 - 05:20 PM
Charlieman's
suggestion will allow you to mount a zip250 if you first boot from
another disk. However, if you want to use a zip drive in lieu of a hard
drive altogether, you will still need to solve the driver problem in a
way that permits booting from that zip. I do not know how to make that
work in system 6 with a zip250.
Btw, a zip250 is backwards compatible with a zip100, but writing a 100MB
disk in a 250MB zip drive is *very* slow (about 3x-4x) because the
narrower 250MB head has to make 3 passes (!) to erase and write 100MB
tracks.
Since I have a pile of 100MB zip drives and disks, that's pretty much
all I use. I do have a couple 250MB drives, but they get very little use
because of that write speed issue with my large-ish collection of 100MB
disks.
#12
Charlieman
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- 68000
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- LocationLeicester, UK
Posted 07 October 2007 - 02:32 PM
I have had a Mac Plus
booting System 6 from both Zip 100 and 250 drives this evening. The
trick is the preparation of the Zip cartridge. The procedure is similar
for both types.
I used a Plus with a SCSI hard disk, placing the Zip drive as the last
device on the external SCSI chain. The hard disk received a clean
installation of System 6.0.8 (the AppleShare client was broken in the
previous installation) with the Iomega INIT 4.2. For the Zip 250, I used
an INIT that had been modified in the way described previously.
Cartridges that had previously been used in a variety of Macs were used
for this exercise. It can be assumed that they had later drivers
installed at the media level. Using the Anubis utility from CharisMac,
cartridges were low level formatted (to completely remove the old media
driver) and initialised. After quitting Anubis, the cartridges mounted
on the desktop. I copied the System Folder from the hard disk to the Zip
cartridge, shutdown and removed the hard disk from the SCSI chain.
I plugged in the Zip drive as the only device in the SCSI chain, and the
Mac Plus simply booted. This even worked with a Zip 100 cartridge
(previously formatted in a Zip 100 drive) in a Zip 250 drive. If you are
booting from a Zip cartridge, the Iomega INIT does not need to be
installed in the System Folder.
I ran out of time for further testing, so there are things worth trying.
I don't know whether you actually need the INIT during the format
process, and I'll try to repeat the tests without it. I used Anubis
because I have had success using it with awkward SCSI media in the past.
I turned off blind writes in the format (standard practice for a Plus
or SE) but used the other defaults. Other formatting utilities should
work, but you'll need to do your own homework. You don't need a hard
disk to boot for the formatting, but it is quicker than using floppy
disks. I used a late model Plus from 1989/1990 with third generation
ROMs, so the procedure needs testing on earlier models.
#13
Mac128
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- 68020
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Posted 07 October 2007 - 04:07 PM
Charlieman, I'm not
sure I followed ... you say you got the system to recognize an entire
250MB Zip disk with your modified INIT? Or just as a 100MB disk?
Also, I think you are doing what I have been describing on my site and above. In my case I boot up with 6.0.4 on a single 800K floppy with the Iomega 4.2 INIT, format a ZIP 100 disk and then I can install ANY system on it. The Mac will boot up from the ZIP 100 disk running any system from .97/Finder 1.0 up and DOES NOT NEED the Iomega 4.2 INIT in the system. This works on a 512Ke & Plus. As I speculated earlier I think the volume information is encoded on the disk and the Mac simply reads it and recognizes it, which may be why you can use 800K MFS disks with 64K ROMs. You can erase data on such disks, but not format new ones (well I haven't tried to format a new ZIP 100 while booted up from one, but I'll let you know). So I would assume the same to be true with the 250MB Zip, at least you should be able to use 4.2 INIT formated ZIP 100s in it and have them be recognized.
Also, I think you are doing what I have been describing on my site and above. In my case I boot up with 6.0.4 on a single 800K floppy with the Iomega 4.2 INIT, format a ZIP 100 disk and then I can install ANY system on it. The Mac will boot up from the ZIP 100 disk running any system from .97/Finder 1.0 up and DOES NOT NEED the Iomega 4.2 INIT in the system. This works on a 512Ke & Plus. As I speculated earlier I think the volume information is encoded on the disk and the Mac simply reads it and recognizes it, which may be why you can use 800K MFS disks with 64K ROMs. You can erase data on such disks, but not format new ones (well I haven't tried to format a new ZIP 100 while booted up from one, but I'll let you know). So I would assume the same to be true with the 250MB Zip, at least you should be able to use 4.2 INIT formated ZIP 100s in it and have them be recognized.
#14
tomlee59
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- 68000
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- LocationPalo Alto, California
Posted 07 October 2007 - 05:35 PM
Charlieman -- this is
great! Thanks for your hard work figuring all this out, and then also
verifying the procedure. It's great to know that, if I ever want to
migrate to a zip250 for my HD-less Plus, it can be done.
This info ought to be archived somewhere for easy access!
#15
Charlieman
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- 68000
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- LocationLeicester, UK
Posted 08 October 2007 - 01:49 PM
Mac128 said
Charlieman, I'm not sure I followed ... you say you got the system to recognize an entire 250MB Zip disk with your modified INIT? Or just as a 100MB disk?
*Clarification*
The procedures above work for me with the following:
100MB cartridge in 100MB drive
250MB cartridge in 250MB drive
100MB cartridge in 250MB drive
Mac128 said
Also, I think you are doing what I have been describing on my site and above.
Very similar. However, I am using pre-used cartridges that have various media drivers on them. The low level format is essential to remove any evidence of that driver. Otherwise we end up with the well reported problem with Pluses being unable to use or format cartridges that have been "updated" with a later media driver.
The Iomega INIT is *definitely* not required when booting from a Zip cartridge. The INIT manages cartridge ejection and remounts, which are not sensible features when you are using the Zip as your main hard disk! If you boot from a Zip cartridge with the Iomega INIT in the System Folder, it is disabled anyway.
When booting from a hard disk or floppy disk, and then wishing to use an Iomega Zip drive, conventional wisdom is that you require the Iomega driver for formatting and mounting. As I will verify below, this is *not true*.
I repeated my previous formatting experiments *without* an Iomega INIT using the same third party formatter. Low level formats succeeded but an error was reported during the initialisation stage. After a reboot, the Plus recognised that there was a cartridge in the drive, and offered to initialise it. (Note that this is an extra stage when compared to the same procedure *with* the Iomega INIT.) After the second initialisation stage, I copied the System Folder and successfully booted.
I also tested booting from a hard disk and ejecting/remounting a Zip cartridge that had been formatted *without* the Iomega INIT. Everything worked fine, confirming that the third party formatter had installed a decent media level driver that identifies a Zip cartridge as removeable media.
Additionally, I took a formatted, booting Zip 100 cartridge and inserted it in a PowerMac running OS 9.1 with a later Iomega Zip extension (version 6.06). For the sake of it, I copied a few files onto the cartridge. I then tried to boot from the cartridge in a Plus, but the System Folder had been clobbered by OS 9.1, so it was no longer bootable. I reblessed the System Folder and it booted again.
My conclusion is that the Iomega INIT is not required during formatting on a Plus, but may be helpful to my third party formatter (Anubis). This obviously need testing with other formatters. One more test to do, unless anyone has any bright ideas...
#16
Charlieman
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- 68000
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- LocationLeicester, UK
Posted 09 October 2007 - 01:50 PM
The last test I did
last night:
Format a Zip cartridge using Anubis *with* an Iomega INIT. I then tested
ejecting and reinserting the cartridge *without* the INIT installed on
the main hard disk. Disk reinsertions failed to work. Perhaps a version
of SCSI Probe or similar might work for this functionality.
Finding a formatter that will work with System 6 (especially with a 1MB
Plus) is the hard part. Lido 7.5.6 struggles to run in 1MB and Micronet
7.1.9 dies completely. It may be easier to use a higher spec Mac to
perform the format and initialisation, before attaching the Zip drive to
the Mac Plus. I'll carry on playing for a bit (Silver Lining looks good
for the Plus and System 6) and write up my notes in a more coherent
fashion shortly.
#17
Mac128
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- 68020
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Posted 10 October 2007 - 09:02 AM
Charlieman said
However, I am using pre-used cartridges that have various media drivers on them. The low level format is essential to remove any evidence of that driver. Otherwise we end up with the well reported problem with Pluses being unable to use or format cartridges that have been "updated" with a later media driver.
Yes I was using recent PC formatted cartridges, so they were not recognized by the Mac without the Iomega Init in the System folder, but were easily re-formatted with Iomega's 4.2 Zip Tools under System 6.
As for the updated driver problem, I thought the main issue was having to reformat the disk with the 4.2 driver Tools, meaning back it up and re-initialize, a real pain either way. All of my old Zip disks were updated to newer drivers at some point back in the day before I knew about this problem. However, I have since successfully restored all of them to bootable 4.2 drivers using the 4.2 Zip Tools alone (under OS 8.6 no less).
Also, I presume you formatted the Zip 250 disk with a third party utility and not the Zip tools which would require System 7 and likely not be recognized by the Plus?
This may be of some help with third party formatters from Michael Peters's defunct website:
This app uses the SIOUX console library
Choose 'Quit' from the file menu to quit.
Use fake disk names (/dev/scsi
Top level command (? for help): l /dev/scsi0.5
finding devices .......
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/scsi0.5' (/dev/sdb)
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map 80 @ 1
2: Iomega_DiskInfo 10 @ 81
3: Apple_Driver* 400 @ 91
4: Apple_HFS 196106 @ 491 ( 95.8M)
5: Iomega_backup 1 @ 196597
6: Iomega_DiskInfo 10 @ 196598
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=196608 (96.0M)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 91 for 4, type=0x1
Top level command (? for help):
#18
krye
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- 6502
- LocationNY, USA
Posted 26 November 2008 - 10:17 AM
Anyone know why my Zip
100 with System 7.5.5 installed boots up my SE no problem, but not my
Mac Plus? The Mac Plus powers on. For a second I get a smily face, but
it then turns to a question mark after a few seconds. I have the Iomega
4.2 INIT in the system folder, but I thought you didn't need any INITs
to boot a SCSI device.
#19
Mac128
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- 68020
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Posted 26 November 2008 - 03:23 PM
krye said
Anyone know why my Zip 100 with System 7.5.5 installed boots up my SE no problem, but not my Mac Plus? The Mac Plus powers on. For a second I get a smily face, but it then turns to a question mark after a few seconds. I have the Iomega 4.2 INIT in the system folder, but I thought you didn't need any INITs to boot a SCSI device.
The Zip drive itself has to have the 4.2 driver formatted on it (i.e. not in the System folder which does not need it to boot). Depending on what Zip INIT you are using on the SE System, or other Macs, there was a nasty habit of the ZIP INIT updating the ZIP disk without asking if the INIT was newer than that installed on the disk.
You could also have termination issues. I believe the Mac Plus does not provide termination power but the SE does.
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