Zip 100 Parallel Drive Problems

[dammwj]

I am running Redhat Linux 8.0, with the 2.4.20-18.8 kernel. The machine is an old Pentium 166.

Despite following the various HowTo's very closely, I simply cannot get my Zip drive to be recognized by Linux.

When the machine boots, the drive is detected a couple of times, as follows (from dmesg):

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
parport0: irq 7 detected
ppa: Version 2.07 (for Linux 2.4.x)
ppa: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use EPP 32 bit
ppa: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use PS/2
ppa: Communication established with ID 6 using PS/2
scsi0 : Iomega VPI0 (ppa) interface
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: D.13
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Releasing ppa0
scsi : 0 hosts left.

Then, I run modprobe ppa after boot-up, and get the following:

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
ppa: Version 2.07 (for Linux 2.4.x)
ppa: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use EPP 32 bit
ppa: Found device at ID 6, Attempting to use PS/2
ppa: Communication established with ID 6 using PS/2
scsi0 : Iomega VPI0 (ppa) interface
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: D.13
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
scsi: device set offline - not ready or command retry failed after bus reset: host 0 channel 0 id 6 lun 0
SCSI device sda: 196608 512-byte hdwr sectors (101 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
unable to read partition table

The drive lights up briefly, but that's it.

BTW, I know that the drive and the disk inside are fine; I've moved this from a Windows machine where it worked perfectly.

modules.conf contains the following entries:

alias scsi_hostadapter ppa
pre-install scsi_hostadapter insmod parport
alias eth0 tulip

Any help, anyone?

[SuperNu]

There is a problem w/ Red Hat's latest kernels and zip drives. If you go to bugzilla.redhat.com (http://bugzilla.redhat.com) and search for zip drive 2.4.20, you can find bug reports, but no solution as of yet. The only suggestion I have for you is to downgrade to an older kernel if you need to use your zip drive. Or, you can just wait for RH to release a newer kernel version. BTW, 2.4.20-18.9 still has the zip drive problem.

--SN

[bigrigdriver]

I may be out of line here, but. If you have an external zip drive connected to the printer (or printer connected to zip) ppa is known to have problems resolving conflicting or concurrent demands. Go to the iomega site. look around. I don't remember the name, but there is a tarball for linux users which you can easily install to take care of the problem. Basically, ppa will be reduced to a callable module, which will be called as needed by a new module called imm. I installed the tarball a couple of years ago and haven't had any problems with my external zip since then. The package also works for jazz drives if I remember correctly. Don't know if the new zip 750 has been added to the tarball.

Hope this helps:cool:

[dammwj]

Well, thank you SuperNu. I booted into an older kernel, and the zip drive now works.

I'll keep an eye on the upcoming kernel revisions, to see when this gets fixed.

bigrigdriver, I'll take a look at what you suggest, as well.