Someone please help me out here

[Darklight]

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

[Matt_H]

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

No, not trackdisk.device - that's the device for the internal floppy. If the PowerFlyer does claim to allow a Zip drive to be mounted under that device name, it's got to be a nasty hack and can't be very system friendly or stable. It's probably scsi.device or 2nd.scsi.device. Use that FindDevice tool I mentioned earlier to scan all your drive buses and see where your Zip drive is.

As for the buffer size, I'd suggest leaving it at the default value. I'm not really sure about that one. Maybe someone else reading knows?

[Gav]

@ MattH
Yeah thats what elbox also tell me in there emails that hot swapping is only supported by trackdisk.device....
Well the default size is 0x0 in iotools which is why it asks me the size but i have no idea...
Well its past 5am here so i will see how it goes tomorrow but if anyone has anything to add here then please do.
Thanks for all the help so far...

[Matt_H]

They may have meant that the only device in the system that supports hot swapping is trackdisk.device, not that hot swapping is enabled by using trackdisk.device for the Zip drive.

Could another PowerFlyer owner verify this?

[Gav]

@MattH
In the manual it say media such as ls120 and zip drives that you must change the tooltype to trackdisk.device.Then they tell you how the powerflyer/ata3.driver should automount the zip drive using trackdisk.device...
Cheers

[Hyperspeed]

I agree with Matt_H that the ZiP drive can't want to use
trackdisk.device and what Elbox meant was that trackdisk.device is the
only method inbuilt into ROM of hotswapping. Floppies on Amiga do
10K/s whereas a ZiP would do 100K/s at least!

I use the Blizzard SCSI-IV interface and when you attach a new device
to that you have to select `Rescan' from the UnitControl tool. This
forces the SCSI bus to look again at what it's talking to, be it
scanners or a CD-ROM drive.

Doesn't BlizKick support hot swapping of ZiP disks? I've never used it
so can't say if it'd work on a PowerFlyer machine. Doubt it though.

Just out of curiosity, do you have your ZiP drive mounted in place of
the floppy drive? I've always wondered if that could be done (in a
desktop case that is).

As for LS120, now that would be problematic as it must use the floppy
header and not the IDE header as it has to be able to read standard
floppies as well as 120Mb super-floppies. Must be hideously slow but I
do remember Eyetech selling them once so they must be compatible with
Amigas (in which case they'd have to use trackdisk.device wouldn't
they?)


I'm mystified why you went for the Power Flyer over the Surf
SQUIRREL though...   ;-) ;-) ;-)

[Doobrey]

Hyperspeed wrote:

As for LS120, now that would be problematic as it must use the floppy
header and not the IDE header as it has to be able to read standard
floppies as well as 120Mb super-floppies. Must be hideously slow but I
do remember Eyetech selling them once so they must be compatible with
Amigas (in which case they'd have to use trackdisk.device wouldn't
they?)

Nope, the LS120 is an internal IDE device.According to some reviews, it's floppy speed is 5x that of a standard floppy drive.
 But from what I remember reading a review in an amiga mag many years ago, you can't use Amiga filesystems with it.

[Doobrey]

Matt_H wrote:

No, not trackdisk.device - that's the device for the internal floppy. If the PowerFlyer does claim to allow a Zip drive to be mounted under that device name, it's got to be a nasty hack and can't be very system friendly or stable.

Yes it's a hack,but I wouldn't call it unstable or unfriendly, certainly no worse than IDEFix etc.
It patches trackdisks open function, and checks the unit number.
 If it's 0-3, it goes back to using the normal trackdisk functions for floppy drives, otherwise for 4-7 (ie unit=4+scsi.device unit)it uses it's own routines to translate trackdisk commands into ATAPI ones for the PowerFlyer and 4xIDE Splitter.

[Matt_H]

@ Doobrey & Gav

Huh. Well, I stand corrected on the trackdisk.device area. I have complete confidence in Doobrey's hardware knowledge :-).

Try setting the unit to 6, then.

[Doobrey]

Matt_H wrote:
I have complete confidence in Doobrey's hardware knowledge :-).

Then you're as mad as a bag of badgers. There's people around here with a lot more experience and knowledge than me, I'm bound to be wrong sooner or later.

AFAIK, Gav said in another thread a month or so ago that he'd tried that and it didn't work, so I'm all out of ideas for a fix.

[Gav]

Oh i dunno this is a never ending battle of trying to get something simple to work but it wont for some weird reason.I mean really i am feeling a bit like i just am almost losing the fun aspect of using my amiga.With me trying to figure this out for so long i actually forgot the last time i actually used my amiga for something fun.Recently the only reason i have been powering my amiga up is to do tests for elbox or some other reason.Since my drive had crashed i ended up losing a lot of work that i had done such as settings for all my mediator cards.So i have a lot of work to do really which i felt like i just got fed up with it really.I dont know if i could be pushed to sell it and buy myself a new windows box since i am running an old 450mhz pII machine....
Oh well just see how it goes i suppose but cheers for all the help lads even though im still no further forward and elbox havent replied recently.
Cheers

[Matt_H]

@ Doobrey

Then you're as mad as a bag of badgers. There's people around here with a lot more experience and knowledge than me, I'm bound to be wrong sooner or later.

Hey, if you can build a FlashROM from scratch and wire in a missing access LED, that seems pretty damn good to me. :-)

@ Gav

Sorry to hear about your frustration. Hope you get things working.

[scuzzb494]

Hi

The ZIP drive on the Amiga. Great when it works, hopeless, obviously when it doesn`t. Anyway I have the ZIP drive working on an A1200 with Squirrel and 3.9 OS, on an A1200 with 3.0 and a Blizzard plus the SCSI Kit, and on a towered A1200 with 4 way interface running 3.1, so we have a good range here. First thing I would say is that the Power Flyer should auto detect. Which suggests you have a conflict. Secondly I would suggest that your HDToolbox is picking this up as a hard drive... Sadly this can cause probs cus as you have pointed out you can`t swap the disk out while mounted. You can use a bit of software, which is a pig, cus each and every disk has to be named and formatted in exactly the same way.

Not sure if you can use IDEFix on the Powerflyer ( I wouldn`t be without it to be honest )

The way IDEFix gets round this is to put the ZIP on the second channel off the interface and use a mount command in the startup so you C:LoadIDE before the SetPatch on the startup-sequence. I have the CD and the ZIP on the second channel with the two hard drives on the other. ZIP then becomes UNIT 2. IDEFix is a great bit of software and may help. The device becomes an atapi.device. If I recall I had to install the device as an LS120 device using the tool icon that came with IDEFix. ( holds in hand Power Computings 4 Way IDE Buffered Interface ).. Power admit in this document that many devices claiming to be IDE didn`t work together. They certainly recommend using IdeFIX software to use ATAPI devices ( CD ROM, ZIP Drives etc )

.....going on a bit now sorry...

To correctly install and use an LS120 or ZIP drive you must first connect the hardware then run the INSTALL LS120 program. This is usually installed within your IDEFIX97 drawer on your hard drive. You use the same installer for both LS120 and ZIP drives. During the installation process it will open the FindDevice program and should correctly identify the device. You may need to select ATAPI.DEVICE and then click use. When the installer has finished it should have added a new line to your user-startupto mount the drive. You may get two icons appearing PC4 and DF4 - these are two dosdrivers to allow the reading of AMIGA or
PC disks. Tou can prepare either by QUICK format on the appropriate icon

.............. end quote from blurb.

Reading the PowerFlyer stuff it suggests that although an Amiga formatted ZIP will be autodetected a PC ZIP will not. Therefore an appropriate mount file like my ZIC one below will work. However it states that the device name is

device=scsi.device

Interestingly ( also ) the ATA3Prefs will not operate ( ie run ) while the ATA3.driver or any other software colliding with the ATA3.driver ( eg IDEFIX, ASIM.device etc ) is running.

Just a thought, have you got the ZIP set to auto-booting in the ATA3Prefs settings. ( have a play, but restart to make changes work )

Saying all that I have two ZIP mount files in the DEVS drawer one called ZIC for CrossDOS PC ZIPS and the other called ZIP for Amiga disks.

The icon for the ZIC on the 3.9 machine reads
ZIC(Project)
344Bytes
C:Mount
Stack Size 4096
Activate=1
Startup=1
Device=squirrelscsi.device
Unit=5

On the Tower
C:Mount
Activate=1
Startup=1
Device=atapi.device
Unit=2

Using CED or text editor the mount file
read:

FileSystem=L:CrossDOSFileSystem
Flags=0
Surface=1
SectorPerTrack=32
SectorSize=512
Reserved=0
Interleave=0
Buffers=128
BufMemType=1
MaxTransfer=0x01FE0000
Mask=0xFFFFFFC
BootPri=-127
StackSize=8192
Priority=10
DosType=0x4D534400
LowCyl=1
HighCyl=6143
Mount=1
Activate=1
GlobVec=-1

The ZIP File differs to the Mount File

FileSystem=L:FastFileSystem
Flags=0
Surface=1
SectorPerTrack=68
SectorSize=512
Reserved=2
Interleave=0
Buffers=136
BufMemType=1
MaxTransfer=0x001FE000
Mask=0xFFFFFFE
BootPri=-127
StackSize=1024
Priority=10
DosType=0x444F5303
LowCyl=2
HighCyl=2890
Mount=1
Activate=1
GlobVec=-1

..........................
Sounds like you need ZIC but not ZIP
Locate in DEVS:DOSDrivers, if you have
icon then check INFORMATION from drop
down menu to set device to scsi.device
The unit number shouldnt conflict with
any other devices I guess ( the PF manual
doesn`t say though it does say...
Primary Master Unit 0
Primary Slave Unit 1
Secondary Master Unit 2
Secondary Slave Unit 3
..........................

With 3.9 you get the ZIP tools box which
is useful, but the old traditional HDToolbox
has been junked. I liked the old HDToolBox cus
you could edit the ToolType to search for
any kind of device. You simply add lines that
say ( under information search from menu )

SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=xxxx.device
SCSI_MAX_ADDRESS=6
SCSI_MAX_LUN=0
XT_NAME=XT

This kind off interogation tools
method is why I stay under 3.5 ( retro )

Also if you use a tool like SYSINFO
you can check on all the devices and
drives you have mounted.

I junked my PowerFlyer by the way and
simply use the 4 Way interface and IDE-FIX.
The other thing to do is get an SCSI card
and run the SCSI ZIP from this. The ZIP you
have is the IDE version for internal use
is it. ( silly question, sorry )

Mounting the ZIP as a hard drive is hell. You
need to get it reading as a floppy. That is where
your problem lies. Sadly I can`t help you with
the powerflyer, though I do have the manual. To be honest there is very little I don`t have, check out the site.

Have fun sorting your problems. And I wouldn`t blame the manufacturer or supplier. Makes all the more the joy of making it work. You will.

scuzz
http://www.scuzz.org.uk/amiga/a_amiga_inframe.htm

[Homer]

I can't add much to this other than that I do have both a LS120 and a ZIP drive on my 4 way IDE adapter (plus HD and CD drives). I did have problems setting it up, and spent a lot of time talking to Eyetech at the time. Good luck setting it up, its well worth it (although the LS120 is around 5 times slower than the ZIP on my system !). Oh, and yes, both drives allow disk swapping :-)

[Gav]

Thanks for the replys people
It is so hard because im not sure what i should use?Should i use trackdisk.device or scsi.device?
Well i used the zic file and a drive appears on screen using a Hard drive icon but has a shadow over it and says,Zic:uninitialized..So how would i format this?Second of all how do i find out if the zip actually has an icon to show up on screen???
Then when i try and use iotools and if i click on any function i get the following,Failed to obtain the disk status from the scsi.device,unit 2.
Error : packet request type unknown..now i usualy get tehat same message if i use teh zip dos driver or zic but with trackdisk.device i get nothing at all.
Cheers....

[Gav]

Bump