Mounting IDE ZIP Drives

I have an ATAPI ZIP250 in my machine, and a fresh install of Arch 2007.08. Arch sees the drive as /dev/sdc. When I pop a disk in the drive, it needs to be mounted as /dev/sdc4. The issue is that device sdc4 has not been created by Arch and thus it will refuse to mount the disk.
I have discovered via trial and error that I can force the creation of this device by doing something rather stupid: attempt to mount the device itself, not the partition. This seems to cause Arch to examine the device and realize that it needs to create extra devices, which it does.
So, what I have to do right now is pop the disk in the drive, then issue:
# mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt/zip
Arch accesses the drive as a result, but this operation always fails, saying something about bad superblocks, filesystems, etc. BUT, it has the happy side effect of creating /dev/sdc4. From there on out, I can deal with the drive with the normal commands.
This is an ongoing annoyance. Is there any way to make this all happen more transparently? I recall reading once that I could do something with udev rules or something else such that /dev/sdc4 would be auto created as needed. Alternately, could I just save off the /dev/sdc4 file and copy it back into place on each boot? Or perhaps some other mechanism?
Does anyone out there have an ATAPI ZIP250 that they have got this seamlessly working on? Thanks!
Last edited by mac57 (2007-08-19 21:29:13)

Solved!
See the lengthy response in this post:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=36468
I posted the solution separately, with the most informative title I could come up with, so that others Googling this topic on the web may hopefully easily find it.

Similar Messages

SOLVED: Mounting IDE ZIP Drives, "Special Device hdb4 Does Not Exist"

I thought I would post a follow-up, since I have finally resolved this long standing issue, which has plagued me since my first days with Linux many years ago.
As outlined in my original post below, every time I would attempt to access a Zip disk for the first time since boot, Linux (pretty much all distros I have ever tried, with the exception of SuSE 9.3) would fail to mount the disk and report back that "Special device hdb4 does not exist". Of course the "hdb4" part varies from distro to distro and machine to machine, depending on how your Zip disk is connected and how the distro names its disks, but the basic error has been constant. I have always worked around it by redoing the mount command specifying just the device, not the partition, and while that would always fail, it would force the creation of the device /dev/hdb4, and I could carry on. Annoying but effective.
FINALLY, a long term answer. I got my inspiration from a really snarky post I read in another online forum where someone had posted this very same question (this is a very common problem with no common answer it seems!). The respondant, who completely failed to provide a helpful answer, basically said "listen, the OS is telling you what is wrong - the device hdb4 doesn't exist - so fix it, and all will be just fine". Of course, the respondant didn't even bother to offer a suggestion about HOW to fix it.
However, therein lies the inspiration for the solution. Indeed they are right, /dev/hdb4 *doesn't* exist, so how to fix that? They had a point. I started researching the mysteries of mknod, a program that can create /dev files, and the even deeper mysteries of Linux device numbers, both major and minor.
In the end, I found a wonderfully informative document that described the current standard for the device numbering scheme used by mknod, and Linux in general. The key things of interest are this:
1/ The major number for IDE based drives is 3.
2/ IDE allows for 64 partitions per device, so the minor numbers are 0-63 for device "a", 64-127 for device "b" and so on. You derive the minor number of interest for your particular device by taking the starting value of the minor number range of interest for your device and adding the partition number to it. So, for example, hdb4 would have a minor number of 64 (the start of the minor number range for device "b") plus 4 (the partition number in "hdb4"), yielding a result of 68.
3/ The major number for SCSI based drives, or those that your OS treats as SCSI, is 8.
4/ SCSI allows for 16 partitions per device, so the minor numbers are 0-15 for device "a", 16-31 for device "b" and so on. You derive the minor number of interest for your particular device by taking the starting value of the minor number range of interest for your device and adding the partition number to it. So, for example, sdb4 would have a minor number of 16 (the start of the minor number range for device "b") plus 4 (the partition number in "hdb4"), yielding a result of 20.
In my case, Arch seems to be treating all of my disk based devices as SCSI, perhaps because I do have a real SCSI interfaced Jaz drive in my machine. So, the Zip disk of interest in my machine is sdc4 (my real SCSI jaz is sda, my Arch root is sdb, and the IDE Zip is sdc). Applying the above, for /dev/sdc4:
- The major number is 8.
- The minor number is 32 (start of range for device "c") plus 4 (the partition number) = 36.
Armed with this knowledge, I su'd to root and entered:
# mknod /dev/sdc4 b 8 36
and like magic, there is was, /dev/sdc4. I popped a disk into the drive and my first attempt to access it was greeted with success, not the usual "device does not exist" error! By the way, the "b" in the above command is just part of the mknod syntax, and indicates that I am creating a block device (vs. a character device, or some other type of device - disk drives all seem to be "block" devices for apparent reasons).
SO, determine your major number by device type (it will usually be 3 or 8), compute your minor number by device letter and partition number, and add a mknod command to your system startup (so you don't have to do it manually every time) and you are done! No more annoying "device does not exist" errors.
Now for the kicker. It turns out that this information has been available under my nose all along. I just didn't recognize the code. If you do the following:
# ls -ald /dev/sd*
Linux obligingly provides you with the major number and the start of the minor number range for your device. Since Linux has always detected the Zip *device* (just not the partition) this is really all you need to know. When I issue the above command, I get an output like:
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 date time /dev/sdc
Guess what, there they are! "8" is the major number of interest, "32" is the start of the minor number range of interest. If I had just recognized that, and known that all I had to do was add the partition number to the minor number to get the magic number to feed into mknod, things would have been easier.
Sorry for the long post, but like so many things in Linux, the OS doesn't make this easy on the uninitiated. I sincerely hope that this post may help lots of other people to resolve this vexing and longstanding problem.

Solved!
See the lengthy response in this post:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=36468
I posted the solution separately, with the most informative title I could come up with, so that others Googling this topic on the web may hopefully easily find it.

Zip drive

Hello to all!
I'm new to ArchLinux but i have some experience on Linux general. I downloaded and installed the ArchLinux 0.7 base. I have a Iomega Zip 250 ATAPI drive on my system but i can't make it work!
When booting i get the following messages:
hdc: IOMEGA ZIP 250 ATAPI, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
hdc: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: set_drive_speed_status: error=0x04
The point is that there is no /dev/hdc device or anything else related to my zip drive. The kernel installed is 2.6 IDE. Can that be the problem?
Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Hi rookie.
You might want to take a look at the IOmega site for a copy of their Linux tools:
http://www.iomega.com/software/linuxtools.html
According to this site, you'll need to have /dev/hdc work with the ide-scsi device driver. To set this up, change /etc/lilo.conf (if you're using lilo):
append="hdc=ide-scsi"
or and the following option to the "kernel" line in /boot/grub/menu.lst (if you're using grub):
hdc=ide-scsi
Note: This will only go into effect if you reboot after changing the configuration.
This should make the Zip drive accessible during the boot process and should remove the error message you're reporting.
Next you'll need to configure /etc/fstab to be able to mount the Zip drive with a line something like:
/dev/hdc /mnt/zip vfat defaults,user,noauto 0 0
since Zip drives are normally formatted as FAT drives ("vfat"), you want to gain access to them as a regular user ("user"), and they are not always connected to the computer so you don't want them automatically mounted when you're booting ("noauto"). Of course, you can change these to suit your situation.
You'll also need to make, as root or using sudo, a zip drive directory under /mnt, for example:
sudo mkdir /mnt/zip
If all goes well, you should be able to mount the zip drive as a regular user:
mount /mnt/zip
Regards,
Win

Powerbook 180c to zip drive. Is it possible

Is there a way of connecting the powebook 180c to an iomega zip drive?

Dan
Welcome to the Discussions.
The leftmost port under the rear cover (seen from behind) is marked on the body of the PB with the SCSI symbol. The special high-density HDI-30 port is used by Apple in place of the wider DB-25 on desktop machines. You can connect a Zip drive to the PB, but there are two considerations:
1) In most cases you need only a special cable, HDI-30 to CN-50 (Centronics) with a light grey jacket (P/N 590-0717-A), to make the connection. The 30-pin connector at the PB end has only 29 pins, deliberately. This should be the end of the matter.
2) However, because certain of the PowerBook range do not supply termination power to an external SCSI daisy-chain (even one of a single device), and the PB 100 family is one such, you need rather an adapter, HDI-30M to CN-50F, a passthrough terminator CN-50M to CN-50F, and a standard CN-50M to CN-50M peripheral cable such as that used to connect the devices after the first in a daisy-chain attached to a desktop Mac. The adapter should preferably be switchable between positions marked DOCK and SCSI. In DOCK mode all 30 pins are active. Use the SCSI position, which has pin 30 switched out to provide the condition in 1) above. If the adapter is for SCSI only, pin 30 should be absent. The passthrough terminator attached to the adapter provides the required termination.
If you have survived the explanation this far, have the necessary driver for the Zip drive on the PB, and have the needed cable and connectors, you should have no trouble in mounting the Zip drive on the desktop of the 180c.
Apple IIe; 15 x 68K; 7 x PPC; 5 x G3 System 6.0.8 to OS 10.4.x

2000-era Zip disk == 2014-era external Zip drive compatible?

Hello,
Way back in 2000 or so (when I used to do DTP & artworking), I installed one of these internal IDE Zip 100 drives on my non-USB, PCI-card-only Windows PC:
Internal IDE ZIP 100 Drive
I have tons of zip disks with terrabytes of old work files on 'em.
Fast-forward to now. My old my non-USB, PCI-card-only Windows PC with the above IDE Zip drive is no more. I need to buy an external USB Zip drive for my G4 (running Tiger) so that I can access all those old files stored on all my old circa 2000 Zip disks. My question, therefore, is: Does anybody know whether or not my 2000-era Zip disks are compatible with any of these more modern external USB Zip drives?
Iomega ZIP 100MB USB External Disk Drive
IOMEGA ZIP 250 USB DRIVE
Thanks in advance for your help.
NB: I MUST buy a USB Zip drive so that I can use it on my new 2014-era Windows laptop

Here is the Straight Dope; right from the horses mouth:
Is the Zip® 250 drive compatible with my Zip® 100 disks?
Document # 30008.html
The Iomega® Zip® 250 drive is fully read/write compatible with Zip 100 disks. Performance with a Zip 250 drive reading and writing to a Zip 100 disk may be slower than with a Zip 250 disk.
Note: You cannot use Zip 250 disks in a Zip 100 drive. If you place a 250 disk in a Zip 100 drive, the drive will immediately eject the disk.

VIA IDE Miniport Driver

What’s the meaning of these drivers? Sincerely cannot grasp the explanation given in the VIA website
It seems they didn’t want to let it clear at all
You think using them I could drop my HdTach CPU Utilization readings using WinXP and a MSI KT4V?
Will appreciate any advice, thanks Gustavo.-

I believe that VIA IDE Miniport driver is only required in four cases, when you have either :
- An IDE Zip drive, under all Microsoft operating systems, with a 686b
southbridge chip
- An ATA100 hard drive with Windows 2000 prior to Service pack 1
- An ATA133 hard drive under Windows 2000 and Windows XP
- An IDE Zip drive under Win2K

Need generic drivers for firewire zip drive which won't mount in OS 10.3.9

I purchased an external Archos firewire zip drive which worked fine with my G4 in OS 9.2. Once I upgraded to OS 10.3.9, it stopped working consistently. Sometimes if I restart the computer, the zip drive mounts, but most of the time, it doesn't. When I contacted Archos, they said that they do not support OSX. Are there any generic drivers available that might help me? Any other ideas? Please help!
G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

jhps:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
If Archose says they don't support OS X it sounds like you are stuck with running your zip drive in OS 9. There may be generic drives, but I am not aware of any. Maybe someone else might.
You may want to post in the Using Mac OS X Forum where there may be folk who have suggestions for you.
Good luck.
cornelius

Iomega usb zip drive not mounting to desk top

i have a external usb iomega 250 zip drive and i can seem to get it to mount to the desk top
i look on iomega website and it says that OS X dose not need any software install or additional drivers to work
i cant seem to get it to mount on the desk top
i have also installed the software from the disk and it wont mount
i them uninstall the software and try it again and still the same problem
as i know that this is a old beast of a drive system i am trying to get some songs off this disk from a 4 track zip disc recorder
any help would be great
thanks santini

santini,
This article may help:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1720?viewlocale=en_US
Please remember there is no Iomega icon on the desktop until you mount a 250MB disk, just like the optical drive.

Is it possible to use an internal optical drive/ZIP drive mount from a PowerMac G4 Graphite in a PowerMac G4 Quicksilver?

Hello, All. Is it possible to use an internal optical drive/ZIP drive mount from a Power Mac G4 Graphite (Sawtooth) in a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver? Obviously, the two computers use physicly different mounts, but does anyone have any tips or hints to make this possible? I appreciate any advice.

"I may be persistent and attempt to drill holes in the correct position in the front of the Quicksilver chassis."
Unfortunately, it's more than a case of drilling a couple of holes. The modification isn't really feasible, and after you remove the front panel from the Quicksilver case, you'll see what I mean. In the Optical/Zip drive area, the Quicksilver's front chassis wall isn't cut out the same way as previous models were. Prior to the Quicksilver models, the front plastic bezel (with the hinged Optical drive door and a blank or Zip-slotted bezel) was snapped in from the front, after the front panel was installed. The chassis wall had a large opening to accommodate installation/removal of the Optical and Zip drive carrier. As I indicated before, in the Quicksilver model, the Optical and Zip drive carrier is mounted internally. This is necessary because the front chassis wall has two separate openings cut in it. The upper opening is for the oval-shaped, hinged Optical drive door (snaps into place from the interior of the chassis) and the lower opening is a narrow slot for Zip disk insertion and the eject button. To use the Optical and Zip drive carrier from a Sawtooth G4 would require cutting the Quicksilver's front chassis wall, to create an opening large enough for the carrier. In doing this, you'd cut away the metal which has (7) small holes in it, through which the hinged door assembly's plastic mounting pins are inserted to properly position and secure it in place. If you don't want to lose the use of the hinged optical drive door, including the appearance of a seamless front panel, you can't cut away that metal. If you don't care about having a permanent oval opening in the front panel in front of the optical drive, you could attempt your modification. Because the Quicksilver's optical drive typically needs to have the trim piece unsnapped from the front of its tray, I'd want to retain the front panel's hinged door bezel to prevent excessive dust from entering the drive. As I recommended before, check ebay for a pulled carrier.

Computer no longer sees DVD or Zip drives

Hey there all,
Here's one for you. I have a G4 Gigabit Ethernet that I've upgraded with a Powerlogix 1.4 Ghz processor and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. The two drives that came with the computer (the Zip 100 and the DVD-ROM) have stopped working. I can't pinpoint exactly when because for a while I used them only rarely. I do know that they worked after upgrading the chip and I've only just now upgraded the graphics card so I don't think either of those have affected them.
They are still getting power because the light on the Zip comes on at startup (and will sometimes stay on for a loooooooong time though it doesn't make noise and there is no disk inside) and the DVD drive will still open and close. However, neither drive will mount when a disk of any sort is inserted.
I've tried running System Profiler and they don't show up in the lists there either. I checked the ribbon and power cords internally and all the connections SEEM ok. I even just now tried hitting the Cuda button to reset things but that turned up bupkiss.
Any ideas? Any advice? Anyone ever dealt with this before? I 've been shopping around for new drives but before I lay out the cash for that I want to make sure that these aren't saveable. This computer has been an absolute rock for about 6 years and has never had any major problems that I couldn't resolve so I'd hopefully not have to replace it.
Thanks all for your time and consideration, I'd really appreciate any and all help you can offer. Cheers!
G4 Gigabit Ethernet Desktop and 15" G4 Laptop Mac OS X (10.4.9) Mac OS X 10.3.9 on laptop

Hi, RaptorRed67 -
Does the fact that the Zip drive read light comes on at startup and stays on for minutes to hours afterwards bear any clues?
That light is intended to serve as a diesk-being-read indicator. If it stays steady on, that usually means the Zip drive has somehow managed to hang, and needs to be reset. It can also indicate a non-readable disk is lodged inside.
The way to address a disk hung inside is to restart, then immediately press the mouse button, keep it held down for a while. This is a hardware instruction to the Mac to eject all removable media, and operates before any drive has tried to load a disk which may be present.
If the drive itself has hung, which can happen after a non-mountable disk has been ejected, the only way to reset it is to power it off. This means shutting the Mac down - a restart won't do it.
Since you've unplugged that drive, the Mac was probably powered down when you did that. This would indicate there may be something else wrong with the drive, if it is in fact the culprit.
The two drives, optical and Zip, need to be jumpered correctly in order for both to function, just like hard drives. The optical drive should be jumpered as Master, the Zip drive as Slave. It is possible that a jumper fell off.
There may also be something wrong with the controller that serves the bus shared by the two drives. Don't know how to test for that other than to take the machine to an AASP.

Polling - ok to replace my ZIP drive w/ dvd-r?

I have a ZIP drive. it probably has not been used since at least 2002. pretty hilarious. taking up valuable space in my limited g4 tower frontal area...
ok to take it out and install a second dvd-r drive? I can't see why it would be a bad idea, but figured I'd ask just in case. means new dvd-r drive wouldn't have an outer door I suppose.
thanks

It is possible to install a second 5.25" optical drive, but one will need to remove the old tin carrier for the 3.5" zip drive and fashion a new carrier or mount system.
Further, there could be clearance problems with the wider and taller drive in the former zip drive location.
Barring further, physical complications, it is entirely OK if you are up to it.

Adding a 5.25" removable IDE hard drive caddy/unit to a G4/Gigabit.

Hi all,
I recently picked up a PowerMac G4/400 (Gigabit), which I plan to mate with a Digi001 system and run on OS9 to create a very basic (and cheap) ProTools tracking workstation (will be hired out to cash strapped bands for recording demos, etc.)
The idea is I'll take the sessions from the G4 and edit/mix using the current version of ProTools on my iMac. To do this I want to use removable IDE hard drives, so I can take the audio drive straight out of the G4 and plug it into an external firewire 5.25" drive with the same caddy/setup.
The problem is that the G4 only has one 5.25" drive bay and the DVD-ROM drive is there currently. The bay underneath is 3.5" for a ZIP drive. I remember seeing removable hard drive setups installed in G4 towers but can't find any pics or details online now. Was there ever an optional 5.25"+5.25" drive cage available? Or do I have to hack some metal? I don't really care about aesthetics; the tower is going to be mounted in a rack unit, which rules out just using external firewire drives for audio. That and because it will be rented out, everything kinda needs to be bolted down. Worst comes to worst I can always remove the DVD-ROM drive and simply connect it internally when I need for rebuilds, etc. but there is a legitimate need for people to play CDs so that's not so convenient.
Anyone able to offer some ideas?
Cheers, Ben.

Hi-
To use a 5.25" drive, you will have to hack some tin. If you do, a rack like the following would work:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?mainpage=product_info&cPath=213&productsid=316
Only problem is, you would need an external housing to put it in to transfer to the iMac. But, it sounds like you're prepared to do that....
If you put a PCI SATA controller card into the G4, you could use the following 2.5" drive rack, and then use USB 2.0 to transfer to the iMac:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?mainpage=product_info&cPath=213&productsid=21868
Use a controller card like the following:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ACARD/AEC6290M/
The nice thing about the 2.5" device is that it will fit into the 3.5" optical bay.

Can i install system 7 on a zip drive?

Hi
I own a Mac plus and i'd like to connect it to the internet. I had a look at a few web browsers, like MacWWW "Samba" but it isn't great. I'd like to try out MacWeb, but it requires system 7. It appears I need to install system 7 on a hard disk to do so. Problem is, I don't have any SCSI hard disk... and they are quite expensive on ebay. So I was wondering, is it possible to install it on a zip drive? They are quite inexpensive and I already have zip disks at home.
I've never hooked one up to a "classic" Mac, so I hope the os recognises it as a drive and not as a floppy. If not, I'm afraid this won't work...
Thanks,
Bad Gold Eagle
PS: My Mac has 1Mb of RAM, I've got a copy of 7.1. Is 1Mb enough for the early version of MacWeb (1.1.1E)?

Hello,
A Zip drive can be connected to a Macintosh Plus. The following web page has further information about this:
http://www.vintagemacworld.com/pluszip.html
System 7 requires at least 2 MB of RAM. In order to connect a 68000 processor machine to the Internet, you should really have the maximum amount of RAM, though (in this case 4 MB).
An older Internet FAQ could possibly be of interest to you:
http://www.knubbelmac.de/spiegel/mac-internet-faq-2002-12.html
You may also need access to another appropriate approx. 1991-1997 Macintosh computer (with a floppy drive for both 800K and 1.44 MB) to be used as an intermediary for software downloads.
System 7.1 came on 1.44 MB floppy disks, which cannot be used directly on a Macintosh Plus. A full US System 7.0 on 800K floppy disk images contained in a larger self-mounting image (.smi) is available for download from Apple:
http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_7.0.x/System_7.0.smi.bin
Jan

Adding a new Hard Drive in the Zip Drive Bay

Today, I was looking inside my power mac 466 Digital Audio, and I realized that it appeared that a third hard drive could fit into the Zip Drive bay. I has a spare HD and Zip drive lying around, and I realized that they are the same height and width. I know that they use the same connectors (on some dells, the zip drive is plugged in with the HD 2 connector), so is it possible to connect a third hard drive in the Zip bay. In the powermac manual, apple doesn't say that you can, but is it possible, and if it is possible, is it harmful to the computer?

Those particular PowerMacs have two IDE controllers with master/slave setups. One IDE controller is for the optical and Zip drives and the other is for hard drives. You can have two IDE hard drives on the double sled in the back of the PowerMac. You can have a single hard drive each on the middle and front sleds also, but you'll need a separate PCI controller for those drives. That would give you four hard drives without doing anything contrary to Apple's original design. You can put a pair of 120GB IDE hard drives on the double sled and built in IDE controller in the back and then put a pair of 1.5TB SATA drives on the middle and front sleds hooked to a PCI SATA controller. If you need more than that you've still got FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet external storage... What are you doing that needs that much storage anyway? Can't you just burn stuff to CD or DVD and get it off your hard drive(s)? I do video encoding for a TV network and I really don't use much hard drive space. I burn my finished work onto CD or DVD and then delete it off my hard drives.

How to transfer photo files from Iomega Zip Drive cassette to my iMac?

1 GHz PowerPC G4
768 MB DDR SDRAM
external hard disk 500 GB
external hard disk 125 GB
Many years ago I stored/copied my photos onto a Iomega Zip Drive cassette. Subsequently I lost everything in a computer malfunction which Apple Store could not fix; they ultimately replaced my computer. The computer that I was using when I used the Iomega Zip Drive was a Mac Quadra, not an iMac. Unfortunately, I had not backed up anything so the only thing that I have from the time prior to the malfunction is what I have stored on these Zip Drive cassettes and on the hard drive of the iMac that malfunctioned and was replaced with a new iMac. The photos that I really want to get are those of my husband who has since passed away.
It has been so long that I used them or even looked at them that now I don't know how to get those photos onto my present iMac (and I am assuming that it is possible).
Would you be so kind as to tell me what to do to transfer my photos from the Iomega Zip Drive cassette? Thank you very much.
— Lorna in Southern California
http://web.mac.com/lorna6
17" flatscreen iMac, 1 GHz Power PC G4, 768 MB DDR SDRAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) LaCie external hard drive, 111 Gigabytes, iPhoto 6.0.4, Canoscan scanner

Lorna, I'm sorry to hear of your loss.
The easiest thing to do is to purchase an External USB Zip drive (link). As ZIP disks are now legacy technology ebay has a great many available which means they are pretty low cost. Simply connect the drive and insert the disk. The disk will mount on to the desktop.
Alternatively you could see if a local Internet café still has such as drive available and they will be able to burn the contents to CD for a few dollars.
Hope that helps.
mrtotes

Mounting IDE ZIP Drives

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