Hi all,
last night I was given a box full of Zip Drives. They are those blue external ones with 100MB per disk. Although most of them are SCSI, some of them are the LPT type which connected to a standard printer port. They might all be broken, I only tested one LPT last night and it worked, but I remember they were plagued with the famous "Click Of Death" so I may have just got lucky. The questions:
Has anyone ever tried connecting one of these to a CPC or other 8-Bitter?
Has anyone got any info on their protocol or hardware interface?
Were they completely custom units or do they use any real standards?
Should I just chuck them all in the bin, after checking whether they have any useful components inside?
Bryce.
P.s. If anybody else has a use for one, then let me know and I can send them one.
there is some kind of standard for parallel port harddrives, and possibly the zip. no idea if it actually followed the standard. it's an IEEE standard. I'll try and find it.
the transfer depends on your parallel port settings, (normal nibble transfer, epp, ecp etc).
EDIT: IEEE 1284
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1284 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1284)
Yeah, I knew the Port needsd to be set to two-way communication on a PC for the Zip Drive to work, which will be a problem on the CPC. So if I do connect it, it will have to be connected to the extension port. Maybe it's too much bother. A search for Zip Drive on the internet seems to just give 5 million links to e-bay where people are desperate to get rid of them :D
Thanks for the 1284 tip, I don't know that standard, but at least I can now search for something that gives me some results other than e-bay.
Bryce.
Hmm, just found some useful information that politely said "AAAARRRRGH THROW THEM AWAY!!!". They are ARMD devices, ie: Removable ATA Devices. This means I'd have to strap them to an address and let the CPC think that a HDD was there, but also add a patch to the OS to check that a disk was present. Way too much bother, when I can connect a CF Card 100 times it's capacity and 100 times smaller using the exact same hardware. I'll open one tonight and see if there's anything salvagable inside, and then quickly send them to the place that old useless hardware goes....
Bryce.
Quoteand then quickly send them to the place that old useless hardware goes....
ebay ? your cave ?
I too have some ZIP drives and wondered about connecting them.
The only way you'd do it via the parallel would be to strobe the busy line, much like the parallel transfer cable. And that's if you could get the ZIP drive to recognise this.
Like you said, way too much bother, but it would have been nice to have a 100mb drive attached to my Plus!
I have an LPT unit and a USB unit, that still work like a charm.
But, as you said, if you can attach a CF card, the whole thing is pointless unless you want some 'Very Macho' status... ;D
@MacDeath: My Cave is full. The drives go for less than their postage cost on ebay, so it will be the local landfill or a boat to India / North Africa.
@Redbox: Yes, it was tempting, but it's just not worth the bother when there are easier, smaller, higher capacity solutions. Strobing the busy line would work fine, just you would need to add a serial to parallel IC so that the ZIP Drive would accept it and modify one of the CPC HD OS's to send the data that way.
@Robcfg: Zip Drives are Macho?
Bryce.
I mean that you can do it only to prove that you can do anything you want CPC hardware-wise (it also has to do with showing your alpha-male status, CPC hardware-wise, that is :P ).
I would love to connect one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_System_360_tape_drives.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_System_360_tape_drives.jpg)
to a 6128.
I want to see those tapes spinning while it loads.
:D My Cave isn't big enough for one of those! Do you have one?
My "Macho" list of cool things I want to connect to my CPC (but haven't yet):
A scanner (LPT or USB)
A Memory Stick
A Bluetooth Dongle
An iPod
A Mobile Phone
A 2.5' USB HDD
A Touch screen
A USB Joystick / Steering wheel
W-LAN
All possible, if only I had enough time :(
Bryce.
No I don't :(
My personal hardware wants are (at the moment):
- simple interface, sd-card which can be used on 464. sd-card formatted to fat and has files on it, rom can load files direct from filesystem into cpc (cpc does all the spi communication work)
- connecting the cpc to the pc using usb cable, cpc appears as a usb harddrive to pc. You can copy files into it, and they can go direct into cpc's memory, or perhaps cpc can then write it to a disk.... (in usb speak, I think the cpc would be an endpoint).
driving a usb device from the cpc would be nice
You're in luck, both of these devices are still very high up on my list of things I want to make. The bad news, I've no idea when I'm going to get around to doing it.
Bryce.
Maybe you could try going for one of those LS120 drives. IIRC, they accepted normal floppies, too, with great speeds, and they were pretty standard in terms of interfacing. Of course I may be wrong - it's been some 16 years since i moved one back and forth to the university labs to bring ST and MAME images and ROMs to home :)
Heeeheheee!
I still have also a couple of functional LS120 drives. They are attached to the standard IDE cable, so maybe we should try them with the symbiface II (just for the lulz).
Anyway, an IDE hard disk or an IDE to CF (or SD, maybe) adapter is much more practical and easy to use.
I also have a 100MB LPT Zip drive somewhere, I had forgotten about it :laugh:
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:23, 12 June 11
Maybe you could try going for one of those LS120 drives.
LS120/240 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk) = 3.5" with laser positioning precision. Would have been great if no one had been greedy. <sigh>
QuoteIIRC, they accepted normal floppies, too, with great speeds, and they were pretty standard in terms of interfacing.
Not at all; at least in the incarnations I have seen most had an IDE/ATA connection (like hard disks do) - or in fact almost any flavour of interface (parallel, SCSI and up to USB)
except the venerable Shugart bus.
Actually a blessing these days, now that (by stupid design to force obsoletion) many mainboards won't support more than a maximum of one single Shugart-style drive anymore - and hence this honour goes to 5.25" units, none of which can be connected any other way, so 3.5" has to move to some other bus.
Ahhh so I remember wrong - apologies. Maybe it is a standard IDE/ATA interface I had in mind :)
Ok, folks, all LS120/240 drives are IDE drives, but usually, most of them come in a external case with a parallel or SCSI adapter.
My original LS120 drive was a parallel one and now is attached to a K6-2 400 machine. I found a second LS120 drive for Macintosh, and beneath the SCSI external case, there is also an IDE drive.
Despite being attached to the IDE cable, it still reads common floppy formats.
I striped down the Zip Drives yesterday, there's not even anything worth salvaging in them. Although I did find out what causes the "Click Of Death", so I've kept a few spare parts in case my own Zip Drive ever decides to die. They are seriously cheap and nasty inside, it's no wonder they never lasted long. But the PCB layout is very well done, congratulations "that man" :)
Bryce.
anyone tride an IDE zip drive on a CPC yet given we now have IDE interfaces?