ScuzzBlog: Diaries July 2024
Entry 06th July 2024: Post 1: ZIP Drive - Amiga and PC DOSDrivers.
ZIP Drive - Amiga and PC DOSDrivers.
If you have ever used a ZIP drive on an Amiga you will appreciate
that the disk is most beneficial when used in conjunction with a
PC. Thing is, an Amiga formatted ZIP disk cannot be seen on a PC.
To do this you need to format the ZIP as a PC disk.
Back in the early days of the 2000s I was friendly with an Amiga
group in the south called Amiga_SA. During my conversations with
them about configuring an SCSI ZIP drive a guy called Paul Q very
kindly sent me a disk full of various drivers to try out.
Eventually after some further editing of the DOSDrivers tool I
was able to configure the ZIP to work both as a PC disk and also
as an Amiga disk.
Why the two? Well if you want to support all those long file names
and unique file types you are better formatting the drive as an
Amiga drive so you can easily use the disk on other Amigas. The
disk can be used very much like a hard drive.
However the PC format disk will compress files names to 8 and 2
format and insert accepted PC file names. In this instance I am
more likely to format the drive on the PC.
I understand there are newer USB versions of the drive, but for
me, cus I can, I use SCSI on the Amiga with the SCSI kit off the
Blizzard or GVP Turbo, Squirrel or Surf Squirrel.
The key to getting these things working is making sure you terminate
correctly when on a chain and making sure the 'ToolType' icon is
set to the correct unit number. Another point is to make sure the
ZIP is on the end of the chain so when it winds down it doesn't
kill the SCSI chain.
In terms of support files the PC disk needs Fat95 in L with the
Amiga being reliant on the FastFileSystem.
For retro I use dedicated pre-WindowsXP machines for all kinds of
reasons, none more so than authentication and validation. With a
Win98 or Win95 machine you are totally free from the MS hand-cuffs.
The best way to handle drives is to fit them internally.
The ZIP drive did come with its own support software commonly known
as the Toolbox for formatting and disk management.
There are parallel versions of the drive which I found slower than
the internal and SCSI drives.
The purpose of this blog was to show an image of both the DOSDrivers
file and ToolType [icon] file for an Amiga ZIP disk and PC ZIP disk.
That was all. Just helps when discussing the subject on forums.
Hope that helped.
PS When I transfer stuff to the PC I generally compress them in an
LHA file or ZIP. That way I preserve all the Amiga file names.
ZIP Drive - Amiga and PC DOSDrivers.
Amiga DOSDriver
PC DOSDriver
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Last updated 6th July 2024
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