Here is the instructions from the manual sent with the card.

5. You can use a USB stick to exchange files between your Amiga and other
computers via zzusb.device that is automatically loaded as part of the firmware.
The USB stick needs to be formatted with the Amiga FFS filesystem and RDB.
partition table for this to work. The first partition should be below 4GB in size. You
can use HDlnstTools (with zzusb.device set up as the device , its Icon Information)
to create the partition and format it with Amiga tools, or use an emulator such as
WinUAE. On Linux, you can mount Amiga partitions from the stick by passing the
option -t affs to the regular mount command.

You see my confusion

If you want it to show up automatically in the Amiga without any additional config to your OS, you must make an RDB on the pendrive. If you wish to also mount it in Linux, it must be formatted FFS.

If you want to use MBR partitions and Fat32 for easy use on the PC, then this is totally possible as well.

3.2 has a built in Fat32 compatible CrossDosFilesystem. You need to create a mount file (a text file with the geometry and such) for the USB key. The geometry can be anything small that allows CrossDosFilesystem to read the partition table, the mount file name must end in C (such as ZZUSBC) and you can find the needed DosType for hard disk mounting from the 3.2 FAQ or the online help in the mountlists/mount files section. It might actually be a good idea to start with PC0, rename it as above and then adjust the device name and DosType inside the new mount file. If you don't intend to keep the pen drive always inserted, you ought to store the mount file in sys:storage/dosdrivers where it can still be manually mounted by double clicking or using the mount command from the shell.

If you don't want to learn how to make a mount file from scratch, you can install Fat95, take the CF0 DosDriver from the cfd133.lha package, rename it to ZZUSB or something like that, and edit it with a text editor to use zzusb.device instead of compactflash.device.

I'm having problems under 1.3 using FAT32. At the end of my rope to be honest (I've been at this a while with previous firmware as well). Before I ask my question here, where is the best place to go these days for discussion? The IRC channel which I used to frequent dried up last year, and the MNTRE Community forum seems dry most days, and I'm not sure where the largest collection of active users frequent anymore. Is this the best place?

thanks,
RDP

Minute is still on libera #mnt-amiga. European business hours might be a good time to catch him there. But as always with IRC, you need to be patient and hang around, use a bouncer or a unix client inside screen or similar so that you can have someone catch your messages while you're not there.

Very interesting to note IRC as I had checked my traditionally go-to place for updates and saw the last recorded activity as 2023-04-27 !!!

https://mntre.com/amiga-irc-logs/2023-04-27.log.html

Since that date there has been no activity, so I assumed IRC had stopped being a place for people to gather:

https://mntre.com/amiga-irc-logs/

Based on your comments it might seem the MNTRE logs no longer point properly to the active channel?

Up until a couple of years ago watching the logs with a day delay was fine for me to catch-up on reading, and the web interface was fine for me posting, I had at some point (when I was there as CottonUndies) given up on using my bouncer a couple of years ago when it became a challenge to use with Azure.

But, to note, I see you are not recommending I ask for peer support here, but instead you are pointing me to a location where the man himself frequents (Libera IRC). Interestingly you don't recommend I use the MNTRE Community option! Thanks for the honest opinion.


RDP

There has been discussion after that. :-)

Last mnt irc activity was around mid Jan, so he’s still about. Quite a few ppl from that irc are now on shanshe’s z3660 discord, and there’s an active (unofficial) zz9000 community on acill’s discord too. Both are worth joining if you need support or just like to chat.

Ok, grudgingly adding two more to my neverending list. Hope I remember to look at them occasionally. ;-)

Any news about scanlines emulation with the ZZ9000? Years of waiting.

No but I have been waiting since December when I ordered my ZZ. Obviously there is demand. I wish they made more batches of cards. 6 months is a long wait - but apparently not in Amiga land……

Yeah 6 months is really short in the Amiga user life.
But scanlines are mandatory for a digital scandoubler since the first Indivision and it seems quite simple to make, and the board is around since 2019.
5 years period is almost long even in Amiga time. It is the duration of a deep space mission in Star Trek.

Thanks everyone for the IRC and Discord options! As it is so much easier for me to use Discord rather than IRC I'll try there first.

I still find it interesting that no one recommends the MNTRE Community!!!


thanks,
RDP

Well, theres a good reason for that, you go there, ask a question and wait one year, still no reply from anyone.
After that experience, you dont do it again ;-)

Scanline issue is resolved, press F11/F12 Function key to enable it after buying this item linked below.

https://www.apollo-computer.com/v4standalone.php

Could you please not? The Vampire/neo-Apollo stuff is controversial enough already and is totally unrelated to MNT Research and the ZZ9000.

Just to be clear, discussion about these is in no way forbidden here on these support.hardware sub-forums, but please discuss these products in threads about them.

Agreed, sorry about my little joke, it might rub a few the wrong way. I won’t do it again. Full disclosure, I’ve thought about buying a ZZ9000 for my Amiga 3000 may times since the Vampire is still not available for it. Unfortunately the scan-line issue and lack of availability among other issues has caused me to not pull the trigger and get one. I’m all for developers making lots of different upgrade options for the Amiga scene to make it grow bigger.