18 Apr
2012
18 Apr
'12
10:45 a.m.
Probably borderline for CCtalk, but does anyone have a proper programming manual for the
Iomega ZIP drive ( 100MB atapi version ) ?
I need to know exactly which ATAPI commands have been implemented.
Jos Dreesen
18 Apr
18 Apr
12:22 p.m.
Jos Dreesen wrote:
does anyone have a proper programming manual for the
Iomega ZIP drive
( 100MB atapi version ) ?
I need to know exactly which ATAPI commands have been implemented.
I doubt that such a manual was published; it may not even have existed
inside Iomega. By the time those were introduced, the OEM manuals for
disk drives usually just stated that they were compliant with various
standards (e.g., SFF-8020 and SFF-8070), and did not document the commands.
The only sure way to know if a particular command is implemented on a
drive is to issue the command to the drive and check the result. That
was true even when real OEM manuals were available, as the OEM manuals
often had errors and omissions.
Eric
12:52 p.m.
Look for ZIP driver implementation on Amiga computers, AFAIR, it was
done from scratch with no Iomega help.
---
Enviado do meu Motorola PT550
Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Smith" <eric at brouhaha.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: Iomega ZIP programming manual ?
Jos Dreesen wrote:
does anyone have a proper programming manual for
the Iomega ZIP drive (
100MB atapi version ) ?
I need to know exactly which ATAPI commands have been implemented.
I doubt that such a manual was published; it may not even have existed
inside Iomega. By the time those were introduced, the OEM manuals for
disk drives usually just stated that they were compliant with various
standards (e.g., SFF-8020 and SFF-8070), and did not document the
commands.
The only sure way to know if a particular command is implemented on a
drive is to issue the command to the drive and check the result. That was
true even when real OEM manuals were available, as the OEM manuals often
had errors and omissions.
Eric
1:07 p.m.
On 18 Apr 2012 at 12:22, Eric Smith wrote:
The only sure way to know if a particular command is
implemented on a
drive is to issue the command to the drive and check the result. That
was true even when real OEM manuals were available, as the OEM manuals
often had errors and omissions.
I'd be surprised if the ATAPI commands didn't simply follow the SCSI
commands. It seems to me that SCSI was essentially the reference for
Iomega stuff. Since ATAPI essentially encapsulates the SCSI
commands, it should be pretty easy to verify this.
--Chuck
1:41 p.m.
In article <4F8EBCA6.19105.FE1643 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
I'd be surprised if the ATAPI commands didn't
simply follow the SCSI
commands. It seems to me that SCSI was essentially the reference for
Iomega stuff. Since ATAPI essentially encapsulates the SCSI
commands, it should be pretty easy to verify this.
I was thinking the same thing; I believe the parallel port zip drives
were just SCSI zip drives with a special parallel port implementation
of SCSI for the drive.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
2:36 p.m.
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Richard wrote:
I was thinking the same thing; I believe the parallel
port zip drives
were just SCSI zip drives with a special parallel port implementation
of SCSI for the drive.
That seems a reasonable assumption.
Somewhere in the rubble, I have a few ZIP (actually "ZIP PLUS") drives
that claim to be parallel AND SCSI using the same connector.
3:34 p.m.
On 18 Apr 2012 at 14:36, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Richard wrote:
That seems a reasonable assumption.
Somewhere in the rubble, I have a few ZIP (actually "ZIP PLUS") drives
that claim to be parallel AND SCSI using the same connector.
That matches with what I've discovered on some (but not all) parallel
ZIP drives--the parallel version is a SCSI port replicator attached
to a standard SCSI drive. This does not include all parallel SCSI
ZIP drives, however.
--Chuck
3:55 p.m.
> Somewhere in the rubble, I have a few ZIP
(actually "ZIP PLUS") drives
> that claim to be parallel AND SCSI using the same connector.
On Wed, 18 Apr
2012, Chuck Guzis wrote:
That matches with what I've discovered on some
(but not all) parallel
ZIP drives--the parallel version is a SCSI port replicator attached
to a standard SCSI drive. This does not include all parallel SCSI
ZIP drives, however.
In the "100M" ZIP drives (I don't know from other sizes), there was
"ZIP
parallel", "ZIP SCSI", and "ZIP Plus parallel & SCSI" (at a
slightly
higher price)
I don't doubt that could have all been SCSI internally, with a parallel
adapter, without it, or with an aut0-switching one.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
i
19 Apr
19 Apr
1:28 a.m.
I was thinking the same thing; I believe the parallel
port zip drives
were just SCSI zip drives with a special parallel port implementation
of SCSI for the drive.
It is. You can see in the installed driver something like "Iomega SCSI
Bridge" or something like that. Years ago...
18 Apr
18 Apr
4:46 p.m.
Eric Smith wrote:
The only sure way to know if a particular command is
implemented on a
drive is to issue the command to the drive and check the result. That
was true even when real OEM manuals were available, as the OEM manuals
often had errors and omissions.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I'd be surprised if the ATAPI commands didn't
simply follow the SCSI
commands. It seems to me that SCSI was essentially the reference for
Iomega stuff. Since ATAPI essentially encapsulates the SCSI commands,
it should be pretty easy to verify this.
Certainly, but you still can't entirely assume that any particular SCSI
command is implemented, because even the *mandatory* SCSI commands have
been absent from some devices. (Of course, those devices aren't truly
SCSI-compliant, but there aren't any "SCSI Police" to haul the vendor
off to jail.)
Eric
5:15 p.m.
at one time there sort of was. I worked for Peer Protocols, and one of
the things we sold was a pretty fully implemented target and initiator
model test system. We had a card set that could do up to the ultra. We
never went to all the varieties above the original push on this,
couldn't get the scsi chips from LSI which were not special purposed so
we could use them as general interfaces.
Anyway, vendors would buy our systems to run as either initiators or
targets. They had full source and could customize them to emulate any
special features they had (such as ID info etc.)
I know at one time we could break anything, but the degree to which it
was broken was the key.
Zadian Systems also did a lot of this as a competitor, but later
abandoned our little field and went off into making manufacturing test
equipment.
Ancot was there, but never did the verification and development tools we
did. I guess the proof of the wisdom of the market selection is that
both Ancot and Zadian still are small bits of big corporations, and Peer
went away.
However we did serve to help get all of the systems to work better than
if there were no such tools.
I might mention the tools went for $25,000 and up for the development
systems (you frequently needed two) and our capture tool was $5000 for
the cheap one, and $12,000 for the ultra capable one.
Ancot mastered the capture and analysis business and basically ran us
out, and that was a lucrative line we lost out on eventually.
BTW the thing we broke the most was the Queuing. I remember one time we
tested almost 20 common drives and broke all of them. The problem
showed up when Linux first implemented queuing and actually made the
kernel use it. Most of the other vendors such as Sun programmed around
the shortcomings in their code, but Linux let it all hang out.
Jim
On 4/18/2012 4:46 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
(Of course, those devices aren't truly
SCSI-compliant, but there
aren't any "SCSI Police" to haul the vendor off to jail.)
6:19 p.m.
On 18 Apr 2012 at 16:46, Eric Smith wrote:
Certainly, but you still can't entirely assume that any particular
SCSI command is implemented, because even the *mandatory* SCSI
commands have been absent from some devices. (Of course, those
devices aren't truly SCSI-compliant, but there aren't any "SCSI
Police" to haul the vendor off to jail.)
There were indeed times that I wished that the "SCSI Police" existed.
SCSI streamer drives being most of those times.
--Chuck
2:14 p.m.
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Jos Dreesen wrote:
Probably borderline for CCtalk, but does anyone have a
proper
programming manual for the Iomega ZIP drive ( 100MB atapi version ) ?
I need to know exactly which ATAPI commands have been implemented.
Iomega ZIP drives were breaking several decades ago.
"Click of death"
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Eric Smith wrote:
I doubt that such a manual was published; it may not
even have existed
inside Iomega. By the time those were introduced, the OEM manuals for
disk drives usually just stated that they were compliant with various
standards (e.g., SFF-8020 and SFF-8070), and did not document the
commands.
The only sure way to know if a particular command is implemented on a
drive is to issue the command to the drive and check the result. That
was true even when real OEM manuals were available, as the OEM manuals
often had errors and omissions.
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I'd be surprised if the ATAPI commands didn't
simply follow the SCSI
commands. It seems to me that SCSI was essentially the reference for
Iomega stuff. Since ATAPI essentially encapsulates the SCSI
commands, it should be pretty easy to verify this.
Eric is right. Iomega didn't publish anything, and existence IN-HOUSE was
dubious!
Iomega was notorious for only implementing what THEY needed.
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:
Look for ZIP driver implementation on Amiga
computers, AFAIR, it was
done from scratch with no Iomega help.
THAT I can believe.
Iomega's level of "tech support" was well known.
I got a good deal on a new "Ditto" tape drive. The "extended" tapes
from
Verbatim would physically fit, but only give a tiny fraction of their
rated capacity. it was not exactly the amount that I would expect from
the size wrapping around a 2G limit, etc. So, I tried to contact Iomega
about them.
OK, how would you go about asking, "Do the Verbatim 3.2G tapes work in
your drives?"
Iomega's phone did not have options for asking ANY questions.
Their phone system DID refer you to a Dial-A-Porn number, with a PROMISE
that IF the problem (I had NOT yet stated it as a problem!) was due to a
defect, then there would be a refund of some or all of the Dial-A-Porn
charges.
For years, I asked at the Iomega booth at Comdex. I got referred to the
same phone system.
One time, years later, when I asked, the guy went into a storage cabinet
and gave me "updated drivers"!
I installed the "updated drivers". The drive made a THUNK and never
powered up again.
I was apparently not the only person in the world dissatisfied with their
"tech support". I wonder what happened to the class action suit and the
regulatory actions?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
2:59 p.m.
Iomega's level of "tech support" was
well known.
Hah.
I once asked them - more to see what they'd say than anything else -
why they advertised 100 megs when everything else tells me 96 megs.
(The actual answer: real megabytes versus disk-manufacturer megabytes.)
They told me, formatting overhead.
Um, only 4% overhead? You guys use ECC that crappy??
A few years later, I communicated (email? voice? I forget) with someone
who actually worked on them. The formatting overhead figure he gave me
was a much more believable 25-30 percent.
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4:44 p.m.
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Mouse wrote:
I once asked them - more to see what they'd say
than anything else -
why they advertised 100 megs when everything else tells me 96 megs.
(The actual answer: real megabytes versus disk-manufacturer megabytes.)
They told me, formatting overhead.
I've actually had people tell me, "the space taken up for the Directory".
3:44 p.m.
Jos Dreesen:
Probably borderline for CCtalk, but does anyone have a
proper programming manual for the Iomega ZIP drive ( 100MB atapi version ) ?
I need to know exactly which ATAPI commands have been implemented.
In general, this is a goog starting point for ATA/ATAPI:
http://www.ata-atapi.com/
http://www.ata-atapi.com/hist.html
Some of the sff-stuff can be found here:
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/pub/sff/
And allways keep in mind what Fred said.
hth,
Martin
4:33 p.m.
Jos Dreesen:
Probably borderline for CCtalk, but does anyone have a
proper programming manual for the Iomega ZIP drive ( 100MB atapi version ) ?
I need to know exactly which ATAPI commands have been implemented.
Seems like there were three different ATAPI versions:
http://pw2.netcom.com/~deepone/zipjaz/atapi.html
Probably you need to distinguish between them by testing all
versions.
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