Oh boy...sometimes I wonder about the advise given here.....................
Here is what I know......on Aminet (or maybe elsewhere) there is a hack that lets you connect the parallel version on the amiga ( ppazip.lha ).....it consists of an adaptor that you have to make wich plugs into the 2nd joystick port and the parallel port at the same time to give it the extra signals to be like a PC parallel port. also you can get ZIPTools on Aminet I think (just type ZIP in the search and loads of tools will come up) that lets you format the ZIP disks wether you have the parallel version or the internal IDE version or even the SCSI. I have an external ZIP 250mb for my 1200 as well but I dare not make that adaptor since I also have an internal IDE version, which I plan to get running soon. Here is the Aminet link:
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/