ZIP Drive not playing?

FatRakoon · 30 Apr 2023 at 01:06

Ok, I have used ZIP Drives in the past for mainly getting stuff to and from my Atari Machines.

Not needed this for some time, but decided to do it again, and I find that the ZIP Drives no longer work in newer Operarting systems.

This is a Windows 10 issue as well as Linux

The Drives all work absolutely flawlesslt, as I have chucked Windows 7 onto a spare machine and its running 4 of them in RAID ( No, I dont know why, I mjust piddling about ) and so its surely a Driver issue.

Has anyone had any dealings with these drives and Linux suddenly not playing ball?

Other than just doing what I need to do, through Windows 7, can I sort it to work for future use?

When I try booting up in Linux, it sees it fine as it should, but then the boot sequence hangs... If I eject the disk, then it continues.

When I get to the Desktop and I try using an app to do anything such as GPARTED, its completely invisible?

I have tried ( although not in any serious way ) to force mount it but it either gets ignored, or I do

any thoughts?

picnic · 1 May 2023 at 09:17

Sorry I can't help but I have an old Zip drive and some disks, assumed the drive was dead but maybe not. I'll follow this and hope someone can help out.

FatRakoon · 1 May 2023 at 23:49

Well, here is what I have managed...

Windows 8 or 8.1
Not bothered to try it out!

Windows 10 and 11
Both fail to use it. I have found some info on forcing drivers and they seem to be wrong. They DONT WORK.

Windows 7
On a Fresh install, it did indeed play nicely with the ZIP Drive, and I had access to the files and was able to Read, Wriote and Format the Disks as I wanted to, and I even played with RAID for a bit, purely for kicks and giggles.
But then, once it updated the ATA Driver, funtime was over and that was that!

Windows Vista
Seems to work just fine and I havbe even done a full update and it still played ok.
Now, I would have thought that since updated drivers on Win7 killed its playtime, I was expectign Vista to do the same, but on the test Machine, this was NOT the case. This may however be the case on other Motherboards, but not the tester.

Windows XP
I tried installing from USB but I had a few niggles and I just never bothered sorting it out.

I am NOT bothered about using 32 Bit and I have NOT bothered with 32Bit since the days when I used XP64 - Even back then I knew 64 Bit was superior as the ONLY issue I had with with an old Epson C42 or whatever it was? 32 Bit has been mentioned but its for something that isnt really life or death situation, so I am not worried about it.

Bugger, I just realised that this is in the Linux page... I did post it on the Windows one too.
Ok, well, the thing is clear, that the support for the ZIP Drives has simply been removed, this is for Windows and Linux. Not tried it on the Mac... Probably never will.

Older distros are probably going to play nicely, but newer ones certainly do not.

As with Win 7 - It seems it works with the supplied ATA Drivers, but as soon as you update, it stops.
There is a possibility that the same will happen with Linux of a simlar age perhaps?
I have not done anymore messing about. I got Vista on, did some messing about and once I was done, I guess thats just the end of the line for the ZIP Drives then?

They work fine for the old Atari Machines, and so thats going to have to be it then!

I wish you luck, but for me, its over. ( Wipes tears )

Chaos · 2 May 2023 at 13:00

Maybe you could try using a virtual machine of Windows 7 on something like virtualbox and use that when you need to access them.
You could create a snapshot so its always the same and no updates.

FatRakoon · 2 May 2023 at 13:32

Chaos said:
Maybe you could try using a virtual machine of Windows 7 on something like virtualbox and use that when you need to access them.
You could create a snapshot so its always the same and no updates.

I use VMWare as I do lots of faffing about with Linux distros and its nice to try them out on a VM rather than PC for obvious reasons.
Would that work? I dont think it would as the Host is unable to access them, so the VM probably wont either?? I am only thinking there though!
I like the idea of using a PCI card that will not lose it after an update. If I have another play, thats something that I will definitely be looking at.

picnic · 3 May 2023 at 15:16

Thanks for the detail post @FatRakoon

I thought of using a VM but assumed hardware in a VM would only work if the host could use it. Be great if that's not true.

K.C. Leblanc · 16 May 2023 at 20:14

picnic said:
Thanks for the detail post @FatRakoon

I thought of using a VM but assumed hardware in a VM would only work if the host could use it. Be great if that's not true.

The host can pass the ports to the VM, what interface does the Zip drive have. I remember using a parallel one back in the day, it was quicker then using floppies, just.

FatRakoon · 17 May 2023 at 09:18

K.C. Leblanc said:
The host can pass the ports to the VM, what interface does the Zip drive have. I remember using a parallel one back in the day, it was quicker then using floppies, just.

Yeah, its not HD speeds that sfor sure, however, on an old Atari, its a viable option...

The HDs speeds are about 6MB/s on the stock IDE port.
The SCSI are way quicker of course. Thats why Apps like CuBase Audio only do D2D Recording with SCSI.
Shame cos with the extra IDE ports like on the CT63 the ports are ATA100 so plenty quick enough for the Atari

My ZIP Drive is IDE however it has a SATA to IDE adapter and so its on SATA.

Kurgen · 17 May 2023 at 22:18

im sure my zip drive worked on windows 10 but it was connected to an IDE controller not SATA adaptor. I even had the 5.25" floppy working in windows 10. the zip drive is now in my windows 98 PC. The network card is connected to a 2nd LAN card in my windows 11 PC so i could share files that way if i needed to

FatRakoon · 17 May 2023 at 22:22

I dont have a Motherboard that has an IDE port... I dont think I do anyway?
All my PCs that are working are all connected to the LAN, and comne to think of it, a good few of my Pcsdo have a second LAN port, but hey ho. I only ever used the second port in my server when I setup the Server to also be a proper server and firewall that all other PCs had to go through to get to the internet. Not bothered to do that for some time now.

Throrik · 17 May 2023 at 23:11

In theory there will still be working IDE modules for things like Zip Drives in the kernel or in packages for Linux - I don't have one around to test, but there's a few articles around getting them to work from older versions of Linux. Might be worth chucking a bare metal isntall on a small partition and trying those?

HOWTO: Iomega ATAPI/IDE Zip Drive [Archive] - Ubuntu Forums

Going through zip drive hell? Unfortunately these devices don't always work 'out-of-the-box' on some Linux systems, but it's nothing a little manual configuration can't fix. Here's a detailed how-to for mounting your zip disks in Ubuntu Hoary (for Warty there are a couple of different steps. If...

ubuntuforums.org

Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO: The ZIP drive

Be worth getting an install of Linux and checking if it's listed as recognised and we can potentially advise further there?

FatRakoon · 17 May 2023 at 23:30

Throrik said:
Be worth getting an install of Linux and checking if it's listed as recognised and we can potentially advise further there?

Oh, I have tons of older Linux Distros and I have tried a couple and yes, older distros work with them just fine.
Same with Windows.