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Iomega Zip250 SCSI

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Shadow Lord

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Hello,

Does anyone know if this drive can be used as a boot device like the IDE version? I.E. can I boot directly off of a Zip disk or will I need to use a boot disk in a floppy drive like I do w/ the parallel port version? Thanks!
 
If your system supports booting to a SCSI device, you should be able to boot to a ZIP just fine. Note that you must have the disk in the drive when you power the system on, and the disk will then be treated as a fixed disk, not a removable disk; so you won't be able to eject it and put another disk in.

I've done this with both a Windows 95 system *WAAAAAY* back when Win95 was current, as well as on a Macintosh; although both were a ZIP 100, not a ZIP 250. I've also done this with a 230 MB Fujitsu Magneto-Optical drive.
 
If this is like the 100MB SCSI Zip, then depending on your SCSI adapter, you should be able to boot from it. You may need to have the disk already inserted at system reset time and it's possible that you will not be able to remove the disk as long as the system running from it is active. YMMV.
 
Thanks. I always thought that it was a SCSI option to treat a removable drive as a fixed disk? At least it is on the Adaptec adapters. I will try it out w/ MY CD drive first and that should give me an indication if booting is properly supported by the AHA-2740 adapter. I am hoping it will as it is from the same period as my 2940UW. Surprisingly though it does not support SCAM though, although it could be the older BIOS on the card. No flash upgrades on this baby! :)
 
O.k. tried a couple of bootable CDs and nada. The controller did not attempt to boot of of any of them. So I am guessing it won't do so for a Zip drive either. I really should upgrade the ROM and see if I can get SCAM and boot capabilities!
 
I'm not so sure--the Zip uses a traditional filesystem; the CD is very different, including 2048-byte sectors. Booting from SCSI CD came along fairly late, I seem to remember.
 
Not sure exactly when it came around but I remember being able to boot off of CDs on the 2940UW and that wasn't that much later. The current BIOS on the 2740 is from 1993. There is a 1997 ROM update from Adaptec but it doesn't mention anything about CD booting.
 
That doesn't surprise me. I don't think I started using CD-ROM until about 1992 (a Plextor SCSI drive)--and those were definitely not bootable.

Obviously, Adaptec had an interest in keeping the 2940 adapter current, as it's PCI and present in the field in great quantity and in several variations (e.g. UW, U2W...etc.).

I've got a system with a 2840 (VLB) on it and can check that for booting if you're curious.
 
Well, the El Torito (bootable CD) standard started in 1995 so it will be unlikely to be supported in a 1993 BIOS.
 
krebizfan said:
Well, the El Torito (bootable CD) standard started in 1995 so it will be unlikely to be supported in a 1993 BIOS.
Click to expand...

Then CD booting is out on this card. I checked the BIOS update and although the Adaptec site states it is from 1997 the file dates and read me are from 1994. Assuming that I can NOT boot from the SCSI Zip drive is there any benefit to getting a SCSI Zip vs. a Parallel one? Speed? Xfer rates? Reliability? Parallel ones are a dime a dozen and cost less but I am willing to spend a few bucks more if there is a clear advantage to SCSI. Thanks.
 
I don't understand why you're conflating a Zip drive (basically a hard disk) with a CD-ROM (specialized optical media with its own file system). Why would you suspect that one would imply the other? Please help--I'm lost. :huh:
 
Shadow Lord said:
Then CD booting is out on this card. I checked the BIOS update and although the Adaptec site states it is from 1997 the file dates and read me are from 1994. Assuming that I can NOT boot from the SCSI Zip drive is there any benefit to getting a SCSI Zip vs. a Parallel one? Speed? Xfer rates? Reliability? Parallel ones are a dime a dozen and cost less but I am willing to spend a few bucks more if there is a clear advantage to SCSI. Thanks.
Click to expand...

SCSI Zip drives are a bit faster with better transfer rates. Additionally, SCSI Zip drives will work with operating system that no longer support parallel port drives.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I don't understand why you're conflating a Zip drive (basically a hard disk) with a CD-ROM (specialized optical media with its own file system). Why would you suspect that one would imply the other? Please help--I'm lost. :huh:
Click to expand...


Chuck(G) I am not saying it won't. I am just trying to take that out of the equations so I can do as direct of a comparison between the Parallel and SCSI version . That is all. It may well boot but I am saying even if it won't, like the parallel version, is there any advantage to the SCSI version as it is more expensive.
 
SCSI is obviously the faster interfaced standard, however the drives also get faster with increased capacity. The 750 model is the fastest...

The parallel port drivers are very cheap though and most machines have a parallel port. Very handy for loading software onto an old machine without having to open the case or do any other tweaking. Just run guest.exe and off you go :)
 
Okay things I learned today:

1. SCSI zip drives are much faster then parallel ones. I will post some benchmarks in a few hours.
2. Iomega really cheaped out on the SCSI zip but at least they admit it. If you install the drive in the middle of the chain (i.e. cable not SCSI ID) you will screw things up. Royally. To the point that accessing data on a different channel (e.g. the wide channel if ZIP is on narrow) gets corrupted. You have to install the drive at the end of the chain. Iomega tells you to do this in the manual. I don't know why they just didn't fix the problem if they knew about it but oh well...
3. The Iomega format utility allows you to format and transfer the system files to the ZIP disk. However, I was unable to boot off of the zip disk. May have to tweak Adaptec BIOS settings but for now no worky.
 
Okay from Spinrite:

On the Megacube, both ZIP drives are 250MB. The Parallel port is a non-bidirectional port.

SCSI
Random Sector Access: 50, 200​
Sustained Xfer Rate: 1,174,809​

Parallel
Random Sector Access: 54, 865​
Sustained Xfer Rate: 113,992​

So about a 10 fold difference!
 
Yep, anything Parallel port was limited to the transfer speed of the parallel port. And a floppy drive was almost faster than the parallel port. :eek:

SCSI, even SCSI 1, was much quicker, as your test results show. :)
 
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