2icebitn
Banned
Do they work together? I also have a parallel port to SCSI adapter. Will that work with the 6300?
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AT & T 6300 + Iomega ZIP?
- Thread starter 2icebitn
- Start date
Chuck(G)
25k Member
It should--depending on the interface used. I've run Iomega Jaz drives off of an 8-bit SCSI adapter on a 6300. Worked just fine--even booted from the thing.
2icebitn
Banned
You mean an ISA card SCSI adapter? Do you remember which card? You can plug any SCSI hard drive into any SCSI adapter, correct? I have a 9gig SCSI drive, brand new. It uses a weird Unisys connector though.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
A Trantor T130B, with boot ROM. Worked just fine.
There are several different SCSI schemes beyond wide- and narrow single-ended. There are also high- and low-voltage (LVD and HVD) signalling standards. Google it--SCSI when you wade in deeply, can result in a fair amount of voodoo.
Connectors are another matter.
I suspect that your 9GB drive uses an SCA connector--at least that would be right for the time period.
There are several different SCSI schemes beyond wide- and narrow single-ended. There are also high- and low-voltage (LVD and HVD) signalling standards. Google it--SCSI when you wade in deeply, can result in a fair amount of voodoo.
Connectors are another matter.
I suspect that your 9GB drive uses an SCA connector--at least that would be right for the time period.
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2icebitn
Banned
My understanding is it's similar to sca but not it. Specific to Unisys h/w maybe
So...the tranyor controller, or anything of its vintage, wouldn't work with this thing? What about a Mac IIx? As far as you know.
So...the tranyor controller, or anything of its vintage, wouldn't work with this thing? What about a Mac IIx? As far as you know.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Don't know much about Macs, other than the Performas.
The Trantor T130B should work just fine, but if you want to boot from the Zip drive, you need to have one with the boot PAL and PROM installed. Basically any controller that allows for installing an ASPI driver should work in non-boot mode.
The Trantor T130B should work just fine, but if you want to boot from the Zip drive, you need to have one with the boot PAL and PROM installed. Basically any controller that allows for installing an ASPI driver should work in non-boot mode.
2icebitn
Banned
OK I was unclear. I meant would a controller of that vintage successfully drive this weird 9gig SCSI drive. Or the Mac.
2icebitn
Banned
And I read this reply a little too quick. I've never used Jaz drives, clearly they're made to boot. Zip drives aren't, so that settles that issue. This is all meaningless anyway, as the gotek things are effectively a hard disk anyway.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
What does the Gotek have to do with SCSI?
As far as supporting 9GB drives go, it depends on the driver, so let's do some back-of-the envelope. SCSI drives are addressed as LBA only (CHS is a fabrication of the BIOS support). So let's see: 9GB is about 100000 (hex) and change sectors, or 25 bits. A 6-byte CDB read (08) can address 21 bits, so you'd have to issue, the 10-byte variety (28h), which handles 32-bit sector addresses. AFAIK, the T130B has no problem with 10-byte CDBs, so all you'd need in addition to the basic ASPI driver, is a suitable ASPI Disk driver to layer on it. You should be good to about 2TB there. As long as you put the boot partition in the first 1GB of the drive, you should be able to boot. FWIW, I have a 386 here with a 9GB HP drive running off a rather ancient Ultrastor 14N controller.
If you've ever written a DOS block device driver, the logical device layer using ASPI should be pretty simple to crank out in a few hours if you can't locate one.
See? Easy-peasy.
As far as supporting 9GB drives go, it depends on the driver, so let's do some back-of-the envelope. SCSI drives are addressed as LBA only (CHS is a fabrication of the BIOS support). So let's see: 9GB is about 100000 (hex) and change sectors, or 25 bits. A 6-byte CDB read (08) can address 21 bits, so you'd have to issue, the 10-byte variety (28h), which handles 32-bit sector addresses. AFAIK, the T130B has no problem with 10-byte CDBs, so all you'd need in addition to the basic ASPI driver, is a suitable ASPI Disk driver to layer on it. You should be good to about 2TB there. As long as you put the boot partition in the first 1GB of the drive, you should be able to boot. FWIW, I have a 386 here with a 9GB HP drive running off a rather ancient Ultrastor 14N controller.
If you've ever written a DOS block device driver, the logical device layer using ASPI should be pretty simple to crank out in a few hours if you can't locate one.
See? Easy-peasy.
2icebitn
Banned
The point of the post was to see if there were workable non orthodox storage solutions for old peecees. You got me started with SCSI, I was only wondering about parallel port. In the final analysis if you can store lots of images on thumb drive, then read them with a gotek, who needs a hard disk, or alternative mass storage device?
SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
With Zip my concern would be that Iomega's drivers likely don't work, but PalmZIP might.
Gotek's emulate a floppy drive, so they're no faster than a real one.
Very few of my PCs are floppy drive only, but if you don't mind the speed issue then sure.
Gotek's emulate a floppy drive, so they're no faster than a real one.
1ST1
Veteran Member
I am using a parallel port ZIP drive with my M24. But what I write as follows should match to any XT and using a ZIP drive. So it works. But you have basically two possibilites how to do which depends basically on the ZIP drive you have. This is because there are two firmware versions which are incompatible to each other. There is the 'old' and the 'new' one. Until now we don't know a safe method to differentiate between the two versions of the drive, there is only a soft indicator yet, which has to be evaluated and confirmed by everyone who wants to use a parallel port ZIP drive on XT (like M24) or ... tatataaaaa ... ATARI Portfolio. Yes... The soft indicator is the power supply which was shipped with the drive. There are two very different ones:
- The big power supply at the end of the power cable which plugs directly to the power socket - this one is the 'old' one
- The small power supply somewhere in the middle of the power cable - this one is the 'new' one.
But this is only a soft indicator, not 100% safe, also because the power supplies can be swapped.
Now you have two driver options.
1. The original GUEST.EXE from Iomega.
This one supports both versions of the ZIP 100 drive, 'old' and 'new' one. It also supports the ZIP 250 parallel port drive. If you have the JAZ traveller parport-to-SCSI adapter it even will support SCSI version of ZIP drives and JAZ drive. But there are three disadvantages of the guest driver:
- You need to have at least MS-DOS 5.0 to support the guest driver. Under others this is due to partition size, typically M24 runs DOS 3.20 which can not support 100 MB in one partition
- It officially supports only 80286 processor and better. Luckily an NEC V30 (or V20 for other XT compatible PC) does that job. So you need to swap the processor, if you haven't done that already. I also tested V40 based PC (like some late XT made by Olivetti), it's also fine.
- It takes a lot of memory as it supports a big variety of different iomega drives.
The good thing, as long as you have DOS 5 or better and a V20/V30, guest.exe is easy to use.
2. palmzip (or pofozip specially for Atari Portfolio)
This one only works with the 'old' drive version (big power supply). It works with 8088 and 8086 (no NEC V20/V30/V40 required) and it even works with older DOS versions. But for older DOS versions you need to prepare the ZIP medias to conatain three partions of 32 MB. Palmzip comes with a tool to do so. But on your other PC for data exchange you need to do something to see all three partions, most Windows versions only will see the first partition on the ZIP media. On a newer DOS PC you can use aspippm.sys driver for the parallel poert ZIP drive and use ASPIDISK.SYS for the logical drive access, aspidisk.sys (from Adaptec) can be told to reserve 3 partions for swappable medias. Before you can use the palmzip driver reliable you have to experiment with the timing setting of that driver, you can change that in your config.sys when loading the driver. Please refer to palmzip driver website.
- http://leute.server.de/peichl/palmzipe.htm
There is also a version of palmzip.sys for Atari Portfolio, called pofozip.sys.
- http://leute.server.de/peichl/pofozipe.htm
Notes:
- Until now I didn't got the iomega ASPIPPM.Sys driver to run on my M24, this could be an alternative to guest.exe, maybe a bit more space saving as this.
- M24 internal harddisk is quite slow compared to ZIP drive... ;-)
- The big power supply at the end of the power cable which plugs directly to the power socket - this one is the 'old' one
- The small power supply somewhere in the middle of the power cable - this one is the 'new' one.
But this is only a soft indicator, not 100% safe, also because the power supplies can be swapped.
Now you have two driver options.
1. The original GUEST.EXE from Iomega.
This one supports both versions of the ZIP 100 drive, 'old' and 'new' one. It also supports the ZIP 250 parallel port drive. If you have the JAZ traveller parport-to-SCSI adapter it even will support SCSI version of ZIP drives and JAZ drive. But there are three disadvantages of the guest driver:
- You need to have at least MS-DOS 5.0 to support the guest driver. Under others this is due to partition size, typically M24 runs DOS 3.20 which can not support 100 MB in one partition
- It officially supports only 80286 processor and better. Luckily an NEC V30 (or V20 for other XT compatible PC) does that job. So you need to swap the processor, if you haven't done that already. I also tested V40 based PC (like some late XT made by Olivetti), it's also fine.
- It takes a lot of memory as it supports a big variety of different iomega drives.
The good thing, as long as you have DOS 5 or better and a V20/V30, guest.exe is easy to use.
2. palmzip (or pofozip specially for Atari Portfolio)
This one only works with the 'old' drive version (big power supply). It works with 8088 and 8086 (no NEC V20/V30/V40 required) and it even works with older DOS versions. But for older DOS versions you need to prepare the ZIP medias to conatain three partions of 32 MB. Palmzip comes with a tool to do so. But on your other PC for data exchange you need to do something to see all three partions, most Windows versions only will see the first partition on the ZIP media. On a newer DOS PC you can use aspippm.sys driver for the parallel poert ZIP drive and use ASPIDISK.SYS for the logical drive access, aspidisk.sys (from Adaptec) can be told to reserve 3 partions for swappable medias. Before you can use the palmzip driver reliable you have to experiment with the timing setting of that driver, you can change that in your config.sys when loading the driver. Please refer to palmzip driver website.
- http://leute.server.de/peichl/palmzipe.htm
There is also a version of palmzip.sys for Atari Portfolio, called pofozip.sys.
- http://leute.server.de/peichl/pofozipe.htm
Notes:
- Until now I didn't got the iomega ASPIPPM.Sys driver to run on my M24, this could be an alternative to guest.exe, maybe a bit more space saving as this.
- M24 internal harddisk is quite slow compared to ZIP drive... ;-)