250 Mb Parallel Port Zip Drive Linux Installation & Operation

The installation procedure explained in this document was tested on a system running a GNU/Linux kernel 2.4.18 using a 250 Mb parallel port Zip drive. The operations described below need to be performed as root; i.e. use the command:
su -
and type in the root password.

First, you should create a directory in the file system where you will mount the Zip drive:
mkdir /mnt/zip
and make it accessible to any user:
chmod 777 /mnt/zip

You may then download the zipdrive utility, copy it to your /usr/local/sbin directory and make it executable:
chmod 700 /usr/local/sbin/zipdrive.

Note that the script assumes the Zip drive is the SCSI device /dev/sda4, which should be the case if your machine does not have a SCSI adapter. If /dev/sda is already used by another SCSI device (e.g. SCSI hard drive), you will need to change the expression device=sda4 by device=sdb4.

The zipdrive command is used as follows:

• zipdrive -m to mount a disk
• zipdrive -u to unmount a disk
• zipdrive -e to unmount and eject a disk

“ Thank you so much for your simple, lucid instructions for installing and using a parallel-port Zip drive on Linux! As a non-technical desktop Linux user, I often struggle with arcane instructions meant for geeks. Your simple, step-by-step instructions got me going in minutes after more than an hour struggling unsuccessfully with HOWTOS and other unnecessarily complex directions. Wow. ” — Claire W.

“ I just wanted to thank you for providing such simple, yet effective instructions on how to use a 250 MB Iomega ZIP drive with Linux. Although I am running Red Hat 8.0, your instructions and your script worked just great! I had my ZIP drive working in minutes. ” — Dennis R.