Making Jaz Hard Drive Work?

[MaxFordham]

Okay, some while back, I bought a 2000HD from a guy on ebaY, and it came with a Video Toaster that I can't make work at the moment and some other things, including a GVP SCSI card (of course to make the 2000HD be what it is: the -HD model [but why didn't Commodore make their own SCSI boards--or did they make some?]).

Well, I thought that I might be able to take the Jaz hard disk drive out of my PC, which I replaced with a Rev hard drive, and put this Jaz drive in the Amiga. Well, it ALMOST works sometimes, and I can sometimes even get as far as booting from it on the Amiga and copying stuff to it, but then it just mysteriously breaks down and claims to be unvalidated. And then sometimes I can't even format it in the Amiga anymore, even though I can take it back to the PC and format it fine again. I'm bewildered! Who in here knows the all the right steps to make a SCSI Jaz drive work in the Amiga and KEEP working, and would love to impart their knowledge to me?

Thanks,
Mike A. Christensen

[Flashlab]

Welcome to A.org!

Could it be that your SCSI chain isn't correctly terminated and that some jumpers are in conflict?

[motrucker]

A real 2000HD came with a Commodore 2090 card. They were a pain. If your GVP doesn't have the latest ROM version in it, it will NOT work correctly with any removable drives. What you need is the v4.15 ROM
 

[MaxFordham]

Hi, Flashlab,

Thanks for welcoming me to the forum!

Ohh, I did forget to mention those initial things, that I've double-checked my termination and id.s, and made sure the ids are unique and chain terminated properly--but even then, I can tell you that this doesn't apply to my problem, because even when I only have one SCSI drive connected (meaning that at the time, there's no possible way the id.s were conflicting unless I had numbered the drive as 7, same as the card), I'd still have the problems.

It's the same with the termination: the problems could happen whether the chain is correctly terminated or not.

So do you have, or know someone who has, experience with getting a Jaz drive up and running wonderfully well with an Amiga, and could this person or you tell me the exact things I need to do and use (besides the painfully obvious things like correct id.ing and termination)?

Thanks,
Mike

[MaxFordham]

Hi, Missouri Trucker,

Well, what I have here actually is--or at least was--a real 2000HD, because it has the label on the front that says that model number, but for whatever reason, then, one of the previous owners took that Commodore card out and swapped it with this GVP card. This GVP card has this extra memory on it, but it's not giving the computer extra memory, so I don't know what's up with that.

But I did look at the ROM version, and look at this: it actually isn't that version you're talking about, so maybe that is why it doesn't work completely, even though it does manage to recognize the drive and sometimes work okay. (I wonder why it would be intermittent.) This one is 4.13. How do I get 4.15?

And would you mind explaining to me why an adapter card would have problems with whether or not the media is removable, just because it's not a certain version? I mean (if I could personify that for a minute) why would it take a look at the disk in the drive and "care" whether or not that set of platters (or flimsy plastic thing in a hard case, depending--but platters in the case of Jaz) with magnetic coating on it can be taken out of its drive or not? How do the electronics of the card give a hoot?

So do you have, or know someone who has, experience with getting this kind of thing to work? Could this person tell me the steps for it (other than the obvious things, like id. and term.)?

Thanks,
Mike

[motorollin]

MaxFordham wrote:
why would it take a look at the disk in the drive and "care" whether or not that set of platters (or flimsy plastic thing in a hard case, depending--but platters in the case of Jaz) with magnetic coating on it can be taken out of its drive or not? How do the electronics of the card give a hoot?

The electronics don't, because it is electronically a SCSI device. My guess is that it is seen by the controller as a hard disk, which is not normally removable. But the device can accept some commands which a removable disk, such as a CD-ROM, can also accept. It may also be sending commands back the other way, like "I've got a disk inserted" or "Someone just pressed my eject button". If the controller thinks the device is a standard hard disk and then starts receiving these commands, it may get confused and hang the SCSI chain. The newer ROM version probably accounts for this type of device which is why it can handle it.

Having said all that, I know very little about this so I'm just guessing :-)

--
moto

[MaxFordham]

Hi, Motorollin',

Hey, thanks for your guess about the removable-disk drives and the fixed-disk drives. Yeah, I can see that now, kind of, but in my case I doubt that's the problem, because I even run into trouble when I haven't pressed the eject button or put the Jaz disk in while the computer was on. So I believe something else is up, but I'll still try to get the updated ROM that the other guy was talking about. But I don't know where to get one. Do you know where I can get a 4.15 version of the GVP SCSI card ROM chip?

Thanks,
Mike

[jimbo100]

They come up on eBay from time to time, keep a look out there for 4.15

[rkauer]

Did you find/installed the Jazz dosdriver? Look in Aminet. :roll:

You could try find the ROMs on Amigakit or Vesalia (I think I see those ROMs last week in Vesalia).

[MaxFordham]

rkauer wrote:

Did you find/install the Jaz DOS driver? Look in Aminet. :roll:

You could try find the ROM on Amigakit or Vesalia (I think I see those ROMs last week in Vesalia).

Hi, RKauer,

Okay, I'll look for that driver. Oh, I didn't think anyone could find a driver specific to the Jaz drive, because I thought Iomega hasn't made any. Are you saying that someone else has come along and made some Iomega-like driver for the Jaz drive? But then even in the PC, you can run some things on Iomega just fine without those specific drivers, so why not on the Amiga, always (I did get it to sometimes work)?

Mike



Hi, Jimbo,

Okay, I'll go look for that over there. Thanks.

Mike

[motrucker]

MaxFordham wrote:

Okay, I'll look for that driver. Oh, I didn't think anyone could find a driver specific to the Jaz drive, because I thought Iomega hasn't made any. Are you saying that someone else has come along and made some Iomega-like driver for the Jaz drive? But then even in the PC, you can run some things on Iomega just fine without those specific drivers, so why not on the Amiga, always (I did get it to sometimes work)?

Mike



Hi, Jimbo,

Okay, I'll go look for that over there. Thanks.

Mike

I am not sure these drivers will help. They are listed as working on the 2Gb, but NOT the 1Gb (on the Amiga side, at least). Until you upgrade the GVP SCSI ROM, they will little, if anything.
You can get the ROM image on line, if you can find some one to burn an EPROM for you.
Good Luck

[rkauer]

The only drive I've found on aminet is this.

But they are some text on Aminet about hot to patch the ZJTools (drivers and tools for Zip and Jaz drivers). :-D

[rkauer]

I've found this driver , intended for parallel Zip drives, but with a really interesting manual inside, plus some DOScommands for ZIP/JAZ drives. :idea:

If you read it carefully, you'll find some very interesting things about your problems...

[motrucker]

rkauer wrote:
I've found this driver , intended for parallel Zip drives, but with a really interesting manual inside, plus some DOScommands for ZIP/JAZ drives. :idea:

If you read it carefully, you'll find some very interesting things about your problems...

He STILL needs the ROM upgrade! No "driver" is going to work around that problem!

[rkauer]

motrucker wrote:

He STILL needs the ROM upgrade! No "driver" is going to work around that problem!

I know that! Reading carefully that manual he will know, too.