IDE zip support

[Mithos]

I recently got a very old computer and installed tinycore on it. It works perfectly except that the IDE zip drive does not appear to be detected. how can I enable it?

[curaga]

According to
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/ZIP-Drive.html#ss4.6

It should appear as a hard drive. Since they aren't partitioned usually, TC won't add them to fstab and /mnt, but you can use them manually.

[Mithos]

The only disk detected by fdisk is hdd (the internal hard drive). as I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong at any point), this is on IDE secondary slave. The zip drive is on the IDE primary master - which means hda. however, this cannot be mounted (and nor can hda1 either) and I cannot edit it with cfdisk. please tell me if I'm trying to access it the wrong way or what any problem may be.

(additional, when the zip disk is inserted into the zip drive a little orange light comes on and it makes a whiring noise for a bit)

[curaga]

Please post any relevant parts of dmesg. Might also be worth it to try the scsi extension, as they are internally scsi drives.

[Mithos]

dmseg:

Probing IDE interface ide0...
hdb: Seagate STT20000A, ATAPI TAPE drive
hdb: host max PIO5 wanted PIO255 (auto-tune) selected PIO4
hdb: Disabling (U)DMA for Seagate STT20000A (blacklisted)
hdb: host max PIO5 wanted PIO255 (auto-tune) selected PIO4

I have no idea what most of this means but dmesg doesn't give anything else relating to that drive. (and yes I realize it's hdb not a as I previously said)

[SvOlli]

hdb: Seagate STT20000A, ATAPI TAPE drive

This means on primary slave is an IDE-Streamer, like can be seen here: http://www.pacificdatastorage.com/stt220000a.asp

hdb: Disabling (U)DMA for Seagate STT20000A (blacklisted)
hdb: host max PIO5 wanted PIO255 (auto-tune) selected PIO4

This means the access to that tape-drive will be done via PIO instead of DMA, since the DMA support (on the firmware-side of the streamer) was probably reported to be broken and got blacklisted.

So, my conclusion is: if you've got not a tape-drive and a zip-drive in that machine, the thing you thought of being a zip-drive probably is just a tape-drive.

[Mithos]

Okay. I was given the old pc and told it was a zip drive but I really don't care whether it's a zip drive or Tape drive - I still can't access it. Any help?

[curaga]

We don't have the ide tape drive support enabled. In any case, tapes aren't mounted, you would use tar / mt on them directly.

[SvOlli]

The question is: what do you intend to do with the tape-drive? It can be only used for backups, but not direct access. If you got the old pc without any tapes it's better to invest your money in usb-sticks than in tapes. They work on almost any computer, are probably cheaper than tapes, faster and more secure.

[Mithos]

Actually it was going to be for backups. I got a tape drive with it. but never mind now I got an external usb hdd for backups now. thanks for the help anyway