Re: IOMEGA ZIP Drive for Secondary Boot-Up Drive

Steve Cahill (smc@empire.net)
Sun, 25 Feb 1996 17:07:38 -0500

Dave Lynch wrote:
>
> Tom Kaczmarski <tkaczma@math.luc.edu> wrote:
>
> >I don't think you really can do that. ZIP is not an int 13 (hex I think)
> >device, which means that you CANNOT boot from it, as far as I
> >understand. In addition you cannot easily set it's device # to 0 (you could
> >with a little hacking). However, I think the 2940's have a feature
> >allowing one to change the boot device from 0 to anything one wants.
> >This is what you would have to do to be able to boot from it. If you can
> >either set the device # to 0 or set the boor device to 5 or 6 depending
> >what ID you're using for ZIP, try installing Linux on it like you would
> >on any other hard disk. I don't guarantee however that the hardware will
> >let you boot from it.
>
> While the fact that IOMEGA decided to make only 2 addresses
> available on the SCSI zip drives complicates things, that is all it
> does. The INT 13 issues are a trojan horse. SCSI is not hardware
> interface compatible with the original IBM hard disk controllers (in
> most cases) and so you need a bios that suports it. That bios can be
> on the controller or built in, once you change the bios you can
> choose to make anything you want possible. NMost of the SCSI bioses
> have a good deal of flexibility but never as much as we would like.
> SO the answer is in many systems with many SCSI controllers you can
> boot a SCSI Zip drive, but not in all systems with all controllers. I
> am fairly certain that the adaptec in question is one where a ZIP can
> be made to boot but I don't have an adatec anymore so I can't try to
> prove it.
>
> "Inside every large program is a small one struggling to get out."
> C. A. R. Hoare
David,

Thanks for this in depth reply. Right now I am experiencing newer and
bigger problems. I am trying to get my Linux OS and that *other* OS to
coexist on the same SCSI drive (Conner 2.1GB) and things are going awry
with my kernel it seems (1.3.20 from slackware 3.0).

The filesystem isn't coming up clean despite the fact is says so
often during boot-up. I am finding that I must run e2fsck almost every
time I reboot. I am setting the system under three partitions (/dev/sda2
is for 'root', /dev/sda3 is for '/usr' and /dev/sda4 is for 'swap').

The message I am concerned about and am looking for help in linux-kernel
is:

kernel: Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0 b00
32

If you have any insight as to how or why this is happening please let me
know, because once linux hangs, and it often will, I have a bear of a
time getting that *other* filesytem/OS to boot as well. I am currently
considering installing a separate drive just for that *other* OS, hoping
that this unharmonius relationship of coexistent OS's will be remedied.

Yours,

Steve Cahill
smc@empire.net