Someone please help me out here

[Gav]

Hi
Ok after much hard work and serious problems recently with ata3 software and them my whole os3.9 boot partition needing a fresh install i have questions.Well since ive never been able to get the iomega ide zip drive to work under trackdisk.device like it says in the manual.Elbox say it doesnt need a mountlist if it is formatted in ffs but then others tell me it does.So now with a fresh install im open to hearing if anyone on here actually has a zip drive working with a powerflyer and how they actually did it or if they use a mountlist or not.In the ata3prefs my zip drive is master on channel two and it appears in HD toolbox also.
My drive works because i tried it in my pc although even though i did re install 3.9 i still cant get any latest powerflyer software to work other than the original one i used which was 6.3 or something.
Well i hope this time things work out as its been so annoying and even elbox cant seem to help me out from the looks of things.
Thanks....

[Gav]

Im so sick of this crap with power flyers and zip drives and elbox not even having a clue about it.The drive acts like a hard disk if i change the tool type to scsi.device but of course i cant change disks unless i switch the machine off.If i change it to trackdisk.device nothing happens there with that.If i do what the great manual says and not put a mountlist in the dos drivers folder then nothing happens there either.Then to top it off the new version of ata3.driver doesnt work for me and all my partitions vanish apart from three.I replace the old driver and then they all come back,yesterday for some reason my drive just totally crashed and i couldnt get in to it at all after mucking around with all that ata3 crap.So then that called for me to do a fresh install which i thought might be best anyways.But yeah nothing has changed and my partitions still vanish and the same problems with the zip drive.Ive really had it i mean i have been trying to figure this out for ages and people tell me to install it diffrent ways so i dont even get a simple response there either.It makes me wonder at times why i bother but i still try and figure it out but for all teh hassle it has caused me maybe i should just quit with amiga for a few month......

[Matt_H]

Cartridge drives can either be given a mountlist, or have an RDB installed on them.

Since you are seeing the drive in HDToolbox, it should just be a simple matter of hitting the "Install" button to prep the disk.

Alternatively, see SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers. 3.9 comes with a file called ZIP and another called ZIC. ZIP is a mountlist for FFS Zip disks, ZIC is one for CrossDOS disks. Adjust the device/unit info to match. I think it's in the ToolTypes. It'll be whatever the device name of the PowerFlyer is, unit 2. IOTools in SYS:Tools might be useful, too.

EDIT:
If the PowerFlyer uses scsi.device, it's going to conflict with the scsi.device in the 1200's ROM. One or the other will probably be renamed to 2nd.scsi.device. Adding
SKIPROMMODULES scsi.device
to your Setpatch line in the startup-sequence might help. You also might want to download the IDEFix package - there's a tool in there called FindDevice which will give you a scan of everything on your IDE buses. Might give you a clear picture of how exactly everything's configured.

Also, have you installed BB2? There's a new version of the NSDPatch.cfg in it that may help with your missing partitions. It's not activated by default, so you'll have to rename Devs:NSDPatch.cfg-BB2 (or whatever it's called) to plain NSDPatch.cfg. Be sure to back up the old one, just in case.

[Gav]

Thanks for the reply.
WEell i hit the install button and it installs the drive but then it just acts like a hard drive so i cant remove a disk...

[Matt_H]

Why can't you remove the disk? What happens?

[Azryl]

Eject the zip disk, install a new one.. reboot the amiga
that should work, because the boot sequence will pickup the new RDB on the newly inserted disk and act as if you have just installed a new harddrive

make sure you pre-prep all your zip disks identically with hdtoolbox

after that you should always be able to reboot after swapping disks and get any info on/off them

Az

[Gav]

Well yeah i know i can do that but thats the thign though according to elbox you can change disks while the computer is on.

Well when i remove the disk the icon stays on the screen so if insert a new one it doesnt appear.
Cheers

[Matt_H]

Ah. That's an easy fix. Load up mounter in SYS:Tools and just remount the device. I had to do that all the time when I swapped out SyQuest cartridges on my A500 many years ago. Some drive controllers can detect those changes automatically, but others can't, including this one, it seems.

Consider IOTools as well, since it's specifically designed to work with Zip drives.

[doctorq]

Ive really had it i mean i have been trying to figure this out for ages and people tell me to install it diffrent ways so i dont even get a simple response there either.

Well, the reason that you haven't gotten a simple answer is because there is no simple answer, have you thought about that?

It would be like someone asking why their computer doesn't boot, without giving more information than that; there can be many reasons, and most of them aren't simple ones.

[Gav]

@ Doctorq
Well that doesnt compare realyl because its not like ive just asked something stupid like,why is my zip not working.I have went in to detail god knows how many times even to elbox who dont even have an answer about there own software.


@MattH

Well i tried what you said abotu the mount and the first time i clicked on it nothing happend really.Then the drive just locked up after a few attempts and then the second time it just says,rigid disk block not found.

Well i will try anything that people tell me but im starting lose hope because the fact is according to elbox it should work right away without any mountlist.
Cheers

[Tahoe]

You are right; it should work straight out of the box. Just attach it, install the ata3.driver (really important) and it should work.
However! I had the same problem you had with partitions disappearing if I ran the driver so I had to disable it.

Does "diskchange " work for you?

[Matt_H]

Mounter and IOTools both require the device name to be set in ToolTypes. Make sure it's correct.

[Gav]

@ Matt
Which should be trackdisk.device,correct??? iotools asks me what buffer size my controller is so how do i find that out??

[Gav]

What about this disk change?put that in startup or something?could you tell me a little more and what exaclty to write?
Cheers

[Darklight]

You need to go into the shell and type 'diskchange ZIP:' where ZIP is the name of your drive.