# Help Getting a SCSI Zip 100 Drive to work

## elboricua

Hey everyone.  I have gotten a lot working under this great distro but for some reason I cannot seem to get my zip drive to work.  This is an externel zip drive attached to an adaptec non bootable scsi card.

Ok.  Here are the steps that I have taken so far to try and get this working.

1.  I have compiled vfat and fat support in my kernel.  I know that zip disks use vfat.  

2.  I have two adaptec scsi cards in my machine.  both are aic7xxx type.  one is running using aic7xxx and the other scsi_mod.  The bootable card running aic7xxx and the non bootable scsi_mod.  

3.  i created a mount point for the zip drive of /mnt/zip100.0

4.  I added the following to my /etc/fstab

        /dev/sdb4 /mnt/zip100.0 vfat noauto,user 0 0

5.  I did not try to mount the drive.  I restarted the machine (other things I was doing required it) and I got a boot stop error in /etc/fstab.  so I commented the line out. 

Is my syntax wrong with the entry?  Since the card is the second scsi card?  The only things attached to the bootable SCSI card is an old dds1 archive python tape drive.  (I lost the documentation for it and it only seems to work with the bootable card.  It will not work on the non bootable card.  I have everything nicely teminating too)

My thoughts so far are to open the machine and get the adaptec card models and compile their support right into the kernel.  They are both aha 17 somethings.  I need to open the machine to get them.  I "rescued" them from my comanies garbage bin, and both work perfectly fine.  (they did with Redhat which was there before)  I know that I can compile them with the proper numbers.  Think that will help?  Thanks in advance!!    :Smile: 

----------

## ASCI Blue

One thing I can suggest is to change the number on the sd, maybe even use sda rather than sdb. I'm not familiar with your setup so that's purly speculation. 

Second is to change the vfat to auto. In every distro before Gentoo I'm pretty sure that my USB Zip was set to auto for file system type.

Those are the only things I can think of, you're lucky as you have the sd's which for some strange reason I don't so I can't mount my usb Zip.  :Razz: 

----------

## elboricua

Well almost anyway.  I did a modprobe vfat.0 and boom error.  I amd sure that the modules where in auto.module.  I recompiled the kernel with support for the cards in the kernel copied into /boot and things seem to be working out now.    :Smile:   when I reboot the system it sometimes won't recognize the drive when I mount /dev/zip100.0 but I think that is a different issue!!  I think it has to do with auto noauto in /etc/fstab.

----------

## elboricua

I got it working perfectly now.  

Ok anyone who has one of these drives and is having problems here is what I did.

1.  I recompiled the kernel with Vfat built in.  This automatically selected the PC BIOS partition types (which I kept forgetting and why it didn't work) Of course before recompileing I use make mrproper to clean up any previous messes  :Smile: 

2.  I edited /etc/fstab to have the line

/dev/sda4  /mnt/zip100.0 auto  noauto,rw  0 0

(didn't bother with user because I only want root to be able to mount the drive)

3.  I made sure that I had a zip100.0 under /mnt.  if not mkdir /mnt/zip100.0  

now when I issue a mount /dev/sda4 I get access to my zip drive  

yay!!!!!!!!  woo hooo!!!!!

----------

