[H-GEN] Jaz Drives

[Andrew Pullin]

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Hi Chris (& All),
    I personally don't have a Jaz Drive, but I do have a Zip Drive, which is
basically the same technology only much less storage. I don't have my Zip
drive working on my current install of Linux, but I have had it working.

    Just a few things to clarify the issue. What you have is an auto
detecting parallel/scsi drive. It is marked with both interfaces, and data
transfer is dependent upon which one you use. The cable is the same for both
interfaces with one exception - a scsi connection is a DB25 Female, and a
Parallel is a DB25 Male connector. My Zip Drive came with a parallel cable,
and a DB25 Gender Changer. The idea was to hook it up to which ever
interface was available at the time. There is a marked speed difference to
the two interfaces - scsi is 4-6 times faster in data transfer. The drive
will detect which one you are using and run accordingly (that is the theory
under winDoze anyhow). Under Linux - it depends on how you set it up.

    OK, setting it up. You are half way there already because you have scsi
and parallel support in the Kernel. The next thing to do is check if you
have a version of Linux that supports plug & pray. I use RH9.0 at present
and Kudzu works well in autodetecting of new hardware. If your version of
Linux does this, then just plug it in and it should set it up for you. If
your version of Linux doesn't do this, then you now need to go to the Linux
Documentation Project. There is a document there that tells you exactly how
to set up a Zip & Jaz Drive. It is either a HOWTO or a Mini-HOWTO, I forget
which or exactly what it is called. Mounting of disks is pretty standard
once it is set up - just like a CD.

    One final word of advice: before you get really into this - check how
much the disks are. Zip & Jaz got started because people wanted to move
large files around easily and at the time not everybody had a CD-ROM in
their machine. As CDs became more popular, interest in Zip & Jaz waned
because a CDR cost $5, and a CDRW cost $25, but a 100Mb Zip Disk cost $30,
and a 1Gb Jaz disk cost $125. I know that the Zip & Jaz Disks have come down
in price, but they still are not cheap compared with a CDR. Unfortunately
what they have become is a REALLY slow external disk drive with
comparatively low storage. Hope this helps.
    Cheers!
        Andrew.

> Hi all....thanks for reading this....
> I have scored a 1ghz Jaz drive that has a disk....there is a power supply
and
> a lead that has the SCSI plugs on it and a SCSI to PARALLEL adaptor...that
i
> think is for use on a LPT port......
> have d/l some info from the net but i cant seem to work out how to get the
> /dev to mount.....
> the SCSI support,SCSI disk suppoert and IOMEGA Parallel port zip drive
SCSI
> support are all compiled into the kernel......
> the SCSI host_adapter is also loaded at boot up.....
>
> where do i go from here to get the drive operational......
>
> David Munn
>
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