Setting up a Zip drive on an Amiga.

[barney]

Hello again.  I have another big question.  I just recently bought a SCSI ZIP drive (IOMEGA).  Is it very difficult setting one of these up on an Amiga 2000 or 3000?  What is the process to perform this?  Thanks.

Barney

[RRunner]

I just plugged mine in and it worked. I have the GVP 030 combo board with SCSI controller. There is a plug on the back of the controller for external SCSI devices. I just plugged in the ZIP drive and it worked. Haven't used it in years though...

[marcfrick2112]

Barney: As RRunner said, it should be pretty straight forward. I take it you know the 'basics' about SCSI drives, like ID and termination, etc? One of my 4000's and my A1200T recognised a Zip drive right away, no issues, but I did have several Amiga-formatted Zip disks ready

[RRunner]

I used to have a SCSI controller on a PC I had. I left the ZIP disks PC formatted and used CrossDOS to be able to access them on the Amiga. That way I could copy stuff back and forth between the two machines 100 Mb at a time. Wow... it doesn't seem that long ago when 100 Mb was a huge amount of space! How times have changed...

[A4000_Mad]

I usually start by using FindDevice from the IDEfix97 package available from Aminet. As you can see the IDE Iomega Zip 100 in this A4000 is found as a scsi.device at unit 3.



Next it's just a case of putting the file fat95 into the L drawer of Workbench and setting a suitable driver to the corresponding Device and Unit number. I use PZ1C in Workbench:Devs/DOSDrivers and edit it according to whether the Zip is on an Oktagon card or something else. Giggledisk from Aminet can also create a driver for you :-)

I leave all my Zip or Jaz disks PC formatted and don't go near them with HDToolBox myself. Using fat95 the Amiga can read/write to them just as if they were Amiga formatted. Also great for file transfer between Amiga and PC. Heck, I'm doing it right now to get that screengrab here :-D

[Darrin]

I use an external SCSI drive on my A2000 and A3000 and a 5.25" internal in my A1200 Tower.

If anyone is interested, I'll be selling 3 x 5.25" IDE ZIP 100 drives (ideal for mounting in an A1200 Tower or a PC case) on eBay at the end of the month (along with an A1200T with a Power Flyer Gold and internal ZIP 100 fitted).

[weirdami]

I remember a time when people said that it wasn't possible at all.

[Darrin]

I also use an external SCSI Castlewood ORB drive on my A2000.  It takes 2GB cartridges and makes a great system backup utility or primary hard drive.

[Boot_WB]

weirdami wrote:
I remember a time when people said that it wasn't possible at all.

You old git!  :lol:

[barney]

Thanks A4000_Mad.  I was just wondering though, where do you get that fat895 file?  Is that file already included within Workbench?

Thanks.

[Boot_WB]

It is on the OS3.9 CD somewhere iirc (contributions drawer perhaps?).

If not, http://aminet.net/search?query=fat95
Aminet rules! Your resource for everything Amiga.

Regards



Rich