P1 Compaq and zip drive configurations

[bettablue]

Wonder of Wonders. A friend of mine sent me a box of stuff he no longer had any use for. I was expecting it to be a bunch of junk cables, a floppy drive or two, but when the box arrived, I was very surprised to find the forementioned junk, but in the mix were two internal 100 Meg Zip drives. One for connecting to EDI and the other SCSI. (If someone has a need for the other drive, please let me know. I'll be glad to give it to you, just pay for the shipping)

My Compaq computer is a p1 233. It had a 3.5" 1.44 Meg floppy, I added in a 5.25" 360 K DSDD floppy and id has a CD ROM and 4 Gig hard drive to which I installed Wibndows 98. Here is where my qproblem and qiestion comes in. I read all of the information on modem7's site regarding using a zip drive for storing massive amounts of programs and accessing it via Zip disks. I understand that reading data from the external Zip drive will be slower, but at the same time it will work much better for me.

Due to space limitations, my IBM 5150 lives next to me primary Windows 7 machine in my den. The Compaq has to live in a small corner elsewhere in the house and is currently only run when working with getting data to my 5150. The 5150 has an external Zip drive connected to one of the two lpt ports. Since I installed the internal Zip drive into the Compaq, replacing the 3.5" floppy, I attempted to partition the disk as described, but ran into problems. The iomega software doesn't seem to have some of the options to format the disk in fat16, and willl only format the partitions in fat32. Secondly, when I partition the disk, I am only able to read the first partition. I haven't even gotten the disk over to my 5150 yet. Allo of these issues seem to be related on the version of iomegas software I am using. Both of the Zip disks I have are later models, meaning version 2. Can someone point me to where I'm going wrong here. Maybe I'm missing something major, or simple, but whatecer the case might be, I would still like to use zip drives for loading and saving my IBM's programs and games.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[modem7]

Since I installed the internal Zip drive into the Compaq, replacing the 3.5" floppy, I attempted to partition the disk as described, but ran into problems. The iomega software doesn't seem to have some of the options to format the disk in fat16, and willl only format the partitions in fat32. Secondly, when I partition the disk, I am only able to read the first partition. I haven't even gotten the disk over to my 5150 yet. Allo of these issues seem to be related on the version of iomegas software I am using. Both of the Zip disks I have are later models, meaning version 2. Can someone point me to where I'm going wrong here. Maybe I'm missing something major, or simple, but whatecer the case might be, I would still like to use zip drives for loading and saving my IBM's programs and games.

You described pretty much the same issue in another thread, only a few days ago (post #36 in "Which OS should I use?").
I replied to that.
I guess that you didn't read my reply.

 

[bettablue]

Sorry, didn't see that one. I'm having some other issues with my Windows 7 machine that I'm working on. It looks like my daughter got me a new virus for Christmas this year and some of my web pages don't display. I should have that worked out by tomorrow. Thanks for point it out to me modem. And yes, I'll locate the other post.

 

[Compgeke]

Partitioning a Zip disk won't work, like partitioning an SD card and sticking it into a USB reader since the readers have one drive letter assigned.

On the compaq try running the command "format /q x: fs=fat16" where x: is the drive letter of the Zip drive, which something is telling me it's probably E: based on the fact that you have a hard drive (C: normally) and a CD drive which is usually D:.

 

[bettablue]

Thanks again modem7. Yes indeed, my daughter did indeed get my computer infected so that I was only able to see certain web sites and not able to navigate to others. I was able to rid my computer of the thing and was able to get to your original reply. I am working on getting all of the proper software for the zip interface right now. And, yes, I'll be trying your solution first thing.

Compeke, I tried your solution of typing in the command you gave me. For some reason or other, it won't accept it, but when I replace the fat16 with fat32, it works fine. Me thinks I'll be playing around with this a little bit. I wonder if it has anything to do with the drive itself. I'll try moving the external drive over to the compaq and attempt running the command again, but this time while rebooted into DOS. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again to both of you.

 

[tomasont]

I'm confused. I've never seen a Zip disk formatted with anything but FAT16. I just checked a couple of mine, and they're FAT16. How are you getting them formatted as FAT32? Which Iomega software are you using?

 

[bettablue]

I was using Windows to format the drive. The funny part is that FAT 32 is the only option I have. However, I did download several programs for Iomega's zip drives and now I have the FAT 16 option. I'm still having troubles with the partitioning, but that is mainly due to the floppy drive I installed in the Compaq. I am going to have the drive alligned because only about half of the floppies I write with it are completely readable. The drive is definitely the right type, 360 Kb DSDD, and my drives in my IBM were realigned and calibrated not that long ago and are working perfectly. Me thinks the drive may also just be dirty too, I'll pull it later and clean it out before moving on to more drastic measures.