Zip drive with WinUAE

[abelthorne]

I have a scsi zip drive on my PC and an Amiga-formated zip disk.

Is it possible to mount the drive with WinUAE in order to read the content of the disk ?

I used the zip drive on my Amiga (years ago) and have a mountlist for it but which scsi device should I use with WinUAE ? uaescsi.device (if so, what unit should I use, as this device is also used for ide drives) ? Other device (and how) ?

I've tried to setup a hardrive by adding a folder and using the letter of my zip drive, but I have an error message saying that the letter entered is not suitable.

[thomas]

uaescsi.device ist the correct choice. This document describes how to determine the unit number: http://home.t-online.de/home/thomas-rapp/uaescsi.html (replace "cd-rom" by "zip" ).

If this does not work, you can make a backup of the ZIP disk using WinImage and use that as a HDF.

Bye,
Thomas

[abelthorne]

Originally posted by thomas
uaescsi.device ist the correct choice. This document describes how to determine the unit number: http://home.t-online.de/home/thomas-rapp/uaescsi.html (replace "cd-rom" by "zip" ).

I'll take a look at this. I have used this guide to install OS3.9 but I didn't think that the uaescsi.device was the correct device (how does WinUAE handles unit numbers for e.g. unit 1 on the ide controler and unit 1 on a scsi chain at the same time ? I'll see that. One small detail is nagging me, though : I have tried to set the zip disk letter as a harddisk (in the same way than to mount the cdrom in the guide) but WinUAE doesn't want it...

I'll try again, though.

If this does not work, you can make a backup of the ZIP disk using WinImage and use that as a HDF.

Bye,
Thomas

You mean that this WinImage proggy is able to read the content of an Amiga-formated zip disk ? Where can I find it ?

[Toni Wilen]

It may also appear under "add harddisk"-button if you use Windows 2K or XP.

uaescsi.device unit numbers don't have anything to do with "real" SCSI ids.

[abelthorne]

Well, I've tried to use that guide to detect the unit number of the zip drive (it wasn't the guide I used for OS3.9, I was confused by the name) and... I can't find the zip drive in WinUAE's log. I see my dvd drive, my cd burner and a virtual cd-rom drive that's been added by some software, but no zip...

Is it possible that WinUAE is unable to see my scsi devices because of my scsi controler card (incompatibility with some of them) ?

-- EDIT --

Just tried WinImage 6.10 and I don't understand how to use it to create an image of my zip disk. Could someone explain me step-by-step ?

I've also tried to use the "add harddisk" button of winuae but the zip drive/disk is not in the list.

[thomas]

Do you have WinXP or 2K ? Then please try Toni's suggestion first. In this case uaehf.device is the right name and the unit number is derived from the position in the hdd list, starting with 0 at the top.

I don't have WinImage here, so I'll have to guess. IIRC it maintains the disk image in storage. So there are Open and Save options to load/save the image from/to HDD and there should be Read and Write options to load/save the image from/to its original device.

So to create an image you first have to choose the zip drive as current drive, then read the image into memory and then save the image to hdd.

[abelthorne]

I have WinXP. I tried to add the Amiga zip disk as a harddisk but it is not seen in the hdd list.

I also tried to run the FindDevice prog (in the atapi97 archive) and it sees only my cdrom drives on uaescsi.device (and nothing on uaehf.device). If I check "show all devices" (or something like that), It finds two unknown devices on uaehf.device, with no scsi inquiries.

I'm currently trying to read the disk with WinImage but it seems to me that the prog can't (the "reading disk" progress bar stays at 0% and the image file stays at 0 bytes). Oh, and I've just got a "Floppy error 87 : paramètre incorrect" (incorrect parameter)...

[Toni Wilen]

Click "add harddrive"-button, close WinUAE and attach part of winuaebootlog.txt that shows harddisk information. ("opening device 'blahblah'" etc..) Either WinUAE doesn't detect your drive or WinUAE's RDB detection ignores the drive for some reason.

uaescsi.device:

uaescsi.device normally only supports SCSI/IDE CDROMs. Non-CDROM device support requires working installed ASPI layer (copying wnaspi32.dll from Nero's directory to WinUAE's directory seems to be working better than Adaptec's ASPI) and "Use ASPI SCSI layer"-checkbox ticked.

You may also need to use "-noaspifiltering" -command line parameter to enable detection of all SCSI devices. (remember to be careful if you have SCSI harddisks..)

[thomas]

Do you use the latest version of WinUAE ?

I just remembered there was a discussion about reading Amiga formatted ZIP disks on www.amiga-news.de a long while ago which resulted in this workshop: http://www.jacobs.privat.t-online.de/uaezip-en.html

Perhaps it helps. At least it is a proof that it does actually work for someone.

[abelthorne]

Originally posted by Toni Wilen
Click "add harddrive"-button, close WinUAE and attach part of winuaebootlog.txt that shows harddisk information. ("opening device 'blahblah'" etc..) Either WinUAE doesn't detect your drive or WinUAE's RDB detection ignores the drive for some reason.

Strange, the zip drive seems to be detected : here is an extract of winuaebootlog.txt

opening device '\\?\scsi#disk&ven_iomega&prod_zip_100&rev_e.08#4&213c3386&0&050#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}'
device id string: 'IOMEGA   ZIP 100          E.08'
device size 98703360 bytes
1 MBR partitions found
0: num: 1 type: 04 offset: 0 size: 100663296, type not 0x76
non-empty MBR partition table detected, doing RDB check anyway
hd ignored, not empty and no RDB detected

(before this part was the check for my two ide harddrives)

May it be possible that the problem would simply be that my zip-disk is corrupted ?

I use the latest version of WinUAE.

-- EDIT --

Originally posted by Thomas
I just remembered there was a discussion about reading Amiga formatted ZIP disks on www.amiga-news.de a long while ago which resulted in this workshop: http://www.jacobs.privat.t-online.de/uaezip-en.html

Perhaps it helps. At least it is a proof that it does actually work for someone.

Thanks for the link, it seems to work. I'm currently copying files from the img generated by WinImage (in fact, despite the error, the image is created) to a hdf file.

Will take a while to finish to copy the files and see if they are correct but I think this time it will work.

That doesn't explain why/how to mount a zip disk with WinUAE, but at least, I'll have my data back.

[thomas]

May it be possible that the problem would simply be that my zip-disk is corrupted ?

It is possible, but I rather think you've mixed up the disks. This one is formatted for PC. Or you used some strange mountlist which kept the PC partition table. WinUAE ignores PC disks (for your safety).

[abelthorne]

I haven't mixed up the disk. That one is really Amiga-formated.

The fact is that, after copying its files with ADFOpus on a blank hdf file, this hdf file became unreadable under workbench. I deleted it, made it again, recopied one file from the zip-disk image : it worked ; I copied more files and ADFOpus crashed, makinf the hdf unreadable again.

So I guess that my zip disk is damaged at some point (some damaged blocks or such).

[Toni Wilen]

Unfortunately it still isn't 100% sure drive contains PC partition table.

WinUAE uses Windows API to query contents of PC partition table and sometimes it lies. (don't ask why but I have seen it list single PC-partition even if drive doesn't even have any partition tables...)

[abelthorne]

I don't know how WinUAE is supposed to use my disk ; all I know is that I formated it in FFS on Amiga three years ago. Now if it's supposed to have kept the pc partition table is far above my comprehension of such things

[thomas]

Originally posted by abelthorne
I haven't mixed up the disk. That one is really Amiga-formated.

The fact is that, after copying its files with ADFOpus on a blank hdf file, this hdf file became unreadable under workbench. I deleted it, made it again, recopied one file from the zip-disk image : it worked ; I copied more files and ADFOpus crashed, makinf the hdf unreadable again.

So I guess that my zip disk is damaged at some point (some damaged blocks or such).

Well then copy the files to a Windows directory. I doubt that ADFOpus can make a directory unreadable.

Or force WinUAE to mount the ZIP drive. There is a command line option that overrides the MBR search. I don't remember it, it was mentioned somewhere here in the forums.

[Hungry Horace]

hi all

I am going to do a little bit of thread necromancy here...


I have just found a bunch of my old Zip disks. Most of them dont seem to be PC disks, so i assume they are from my old amiga drive.

i am trying to use winuae to get them mounted - once all the info is extracted i will consider binning them all at last!!

i am 90% confident that these are the DOSdrivers i used 'back in the day' :
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/ZipStandard

i say this because the drive names look familiar.


I am assuming from the above, i just need to set the drivers parameters like so:

device=uaescsi.device
activate=1
unit=x

the trouble is, the above help seem ancient (including dead links etc), and i cannot work out how to get the drive to mount, because i dont know the unit number to use.

i am able to mount the ZIP drive i am using as an HD, and it appears in the drive list as:

*UAE* n/a :IOMEGA ZIP 250 61.T ... however, on mounting it does say 'NO MEDIA' (edit: although it read UNK after restarting UAE) so i cannot even make an image of them ... nothing shows on workbench, but the drive starts activating when i add this and run WinUAE, so something must be happening.

any thoughts / help as to what vital steps i am missing?! I would love to know what is on these disks!

Thanks in advance

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Hungry Horace

i am able to mount the ZIP drive i am using as an HD, and it appears in the drive list as

Enable logging (Paths panel), click Add Harddrive, check winuaebootlog.txt for details about detected drives.