Using a Iomega REV 36GB drive

[Jpor]

Hi all!

Thought I’d ask for advice on here for a change

Got myself a couple of IDE/ATAPI Iomega REV 36GB drives with cartridges.
Have set this up on Amiga by using the “rev” mountlist off Aminet and placed into Devs DOSDrivers.

Plugged the unit up via my primary IDE port on my A1200 tower (Tower boots up and uses SCSI HDD etc..).

I’ve managed to get the Amiga to see the REV drive and cartridge.

Now the fun part. I believe the REV drive is identified as a CDRW in the PeeCee world?
As Amiga OS 3.9 Toolbox is telling me it can’t setup on this device and the initialised cartridge showing up on my Amiga Workbench desktop refuses to format 32GB with “Disk Write Protected”. Can these be used on the Amiga in any shape or form? I.e do I need some sort of CD software to blank the media and to write data to it?

I’m using Kickstart 3.1.4.

Cheers

[Jope]

Here's a few guesses. I don't own a REV drive so can't test.

Are you able to write to your cartridge on a supported OS (Win/Mac)? Asking because some iomega devices have a soft write protect if the cartridge ages or develops a defective area.

Having the REV show up as an optical drive and having the cartridges ship formatted as UDF might imply that writing to the REV cart is supposed to be done using the optical drive packet writing method. I am not aware of a packet writing driver for the Amiga.

[stevelord]

Looking at the Linux project I think Jope is right, it looks reliant on UDF. AllegroCDFS claims to support UDF. I can pop a DVD-ROM into my FastATA box and see if it works if that helps?


You might be able to port something over from the Linux side to interrogate the device but I'm not convinced it's going to be worth the time.

[Jpor]

Cheers guys

Thanks for the offer SteveLord. Have a spare PC that I’ll try one of them in.

@Jope. Will try that on a PeeCee Both drives and cartridges I’ve tested are showing write protects when trying to do anything on the Amiga.

Guess this is why you don’t hear or see people using the Iomega REV drive in the Amiga.

Got the SCSI 2GB Jaz Drives working well I own as these can be used as hotswap HDD which is great.

Just got to test a 250MB ATA/IDE Zip drive when the cartridges arrive for it.

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by Jpor

Hi all!

Thought I’d ask for advice on here for a change

Got myself a couple of IDE/ATAPI Iomega REV 36GB drives with cartridges.
Have set this up on Amiga by using the “rev” mountlist off Aminet and placed into Devs DOSDrivers.

Plugged the unit up via my primary IDE port on my A1200 tower (Tower boots up and uses SCSI HDD etc..).

I’ve managed to get the Amiga to see the REV drive and cartridge.

Now the fun part. I believe the REV drive is identified as a CDRW in the PeeCee world?
As Amiga OS 3.9 Toolbox is telling me it can’t setup on this device and the initialised cartridge showing up on my Amiga Workbench desktop refuses to format 32GB with “Disk Write Protected”. Can these be used on the Amiga in any shape or form? I.e do I need some sort of CD software to blank the media and to write data to it?

I’m using Kickstart 3.1.4.

Cheers

Use a PC and remove all partitions. Format it FAT32 and use the entire drive, do not partition it. Also use DEFAULT block size. Once you do that, plug it back into the A1200, power up from cold start. You should actually now see an icon on your desktop that says 'uninitialized'. Use the WB format command and quick format. You do not need to use HDTOOL box to set it up.

If you want to partition it, then it gets to be a problem because the Amiga and the HDToolbox are not very good with more modern drives for that, even on 3.9.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by Malakie

Use a PC and remove all partitions. Format it FAT32 and use the entire drive, do not partition it. Also use DEFAULT block size. Once you do that, plug it back into the A1200, power up from cold start. You should actually now see an icon on your desktop that says 'uninitialized'. Use the WB format command and quick format. You do not need to use HDTOOL box to set it up.

If you want to partition it, then it gets to be a problem because the Amiga and the HDToolbox are not very good with more modern drives for that, even on 3.9.

Thanks Malakie will give it a go.

[Jpor]

Thought I’d resurrect this thread and give an update.

So after finding sometime, I have managed to install a free copy of VM Workstation play version 14 onto my PeeCee!
Previous to this I tried the Oracle VM software which was a total pain in the arse as none of the USB ports would connect up via the host system. In most cases I was getting the blue screen of Death

So have now installed Windows XP pro 32bit onto my VM machine and installed the now defunct and hard to find Iomega REV software from the web.

Low and behold now have a seeable and working rev 35 drive being seen using a IDE to USB connector and separate PSU. The diagnostic software has given me the green light that the drives and REV 35 cartridges are good. Only issue is tha5 the drives in XP and the software are treated as CD drives and the software will only format them in “UDF”.
So as a workaround I’m using the command line “format” command and setting the format as “FAT32” with the following command;

Format e: /FS:FAT32 /V:empty

E: being the drive setup in windows for the rev 35.

Next step will be to put a drive into an Amiga and try formatting it.

So far so good. Will update when that bits done, just in Case anyone else wants to give this a try

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by Jpor

Thought I’d resurrect this thread and give an update.

So after finding sometime, I have managed to install a free copy of VM Workstation play version 14 onto my PeeCee!
Previous to this I tried the Oracle VM software which was a total pain in the arse as none of the USB ports would connect up via the host system. In most cases I was getting the blue screen of Death

So have now installed Windows XP pro 32bit onto my VM machine and installed the now defunct and hard to find Iomega REV software from the web.

Low and behold now have a seeable and working rev 35 drive being seen using a IDE to USB connector and separate PSU. The diagnostic software has given me the green light that the drives and REV 35 cartridges are good. Only issue is tha5 the drives in XP and the software are treated as CD drives and the software will only format them in “UDF”.
So as a workaround I’m using the command line “format” command and setting the format as “FAT32” with the following command;

Format e: /FS:FAT32 /V:empty

E: being the drive setup in windows for the rev 35.

Next step will be to put a drive into an Amiga and try formatting it.

So far so good. Will update when that bits done, just in Case anyone else wants to give this a try

Oh well FAT32 not a sensible idea. 35GB too big should have recalled the 4GB limit

Fingers crossed formatting with UDF and now showing on Windows 10 will have helped.

[Jope]

Fat32 supports up to 2TB, but XP just refuses to format it as such.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by Jope

Fat32 supports up to 2TB, but XP just refuses to format it as such.

So does Windows 10 it appears. Tried exfAT and NTFS but refuses to format with those as it appears you can’t do anything with REV cartridges apart than format them with the official IOMEGA software. Unfortunately the IOMEGA software was only released for 32-bit windows versions up to XP.
Will be attempting to see what the Amiga makes of them again, now I’ve successfully been able to format the cartridges.