[PARPORT] External Iomega Zip100 parport on Abit BP6 mobo not detected under RedHat 6.1?

From: Roy Wilson (designrw@bellatlantic.net)
Date: Sun Jun 11 2000 - 17:13:29 EDT

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    Hi,
        I've looked at several of the guides, lists, archives, tech-help
    sites, etc. and tried some of the things suggested to no avail. I'm
    assuming (based on what I've seen in the docs) that people are so
    familiar with what I'm describing that I don't need to be precise at
    this point. If needed, I will capture configuration, input and output
    info.

    SYSTEM CONFIGURATION

    I have an ABIT BP6 mobo running RedHat 6.1 (kernel 2.2.12-20smp). I can
    use the zipdrive and printer (sharing the single parallel port) under
    Win98. I don't detect any evidence of the cable being the kind that
    requires Zip-plus treatment. To simplify debugging, I've uncoupled the
    zipdrive and printer, leaving the zipdrive directly connected to LPT1.
    It appears that an older version of ppa is provided by RH. When I
    power-up under RH, the drive on-line light is green and when I insert a
    used (Win98 formatted) disk, the zipdrive appears (a little yellow
    flashing light) to access the diskette. I've fiddled with the BIOS,
    trying out EPP, EPP+ECP etc after noting that there were some detection
    problems at one time depending on the mode.

    WHAT I'VE TRIED

        I have put two alias commands in /etc/conf.modules as suggested.
    Since I never see any evidence in dmesg that ppa has been activated, I
    wonder if I need to do something in addition to have ppa activated at
    bootup.
        After bootup, if I issue a command line "modprobe ppa", lsmod shows
    parport, parport_pc, etc. I ASSUME that this is evidence that ppa has at
    least loaded successfully. If I then try to mount the drive at /zip
    (using fat or vfat), I get a message that asks "insmod driver?". Yet, if
    I try an insmod ppa, I get an "init_module: device or resource busy"
    type of msg. Duh? (Doh?) Any suggestions are most welcome.

    WHAT I'M THINKING OF NEXT

        As a way of insuring that I know whether the port is probed
    successfully, I thought of using id_probe, etc., as provided by Mr.
    Campbell (excuse the formality, I 'misplaced' the first name). The make
    in the "common" sub-directory (supplied via download from torque) barfs
    because asm/io.h, etc. can't be found. My problem is that I don't have
    enough understanding of makefiles to understand how to fix the problem.
    I wonder if I need to move the make and source files into a particular
    place in the local source tree, or create a particular path in TOP, etc.
    Since I see a fair number of similarly named files, I'm facing a
    monkey-at-the-typewriter situation :-). Can ayone suggest a quick course
    on makefiles that might allow me to learn how to compile id_probe (short
    of walking through Stallman's doc)?
        I see that IOMEGA offers beta drivers for 2.2.14 but I desperately
    want to avoid building a new kernel (for the obvious reason that I can
    even build id_probe yet!).

    Thanks in advance for your help.

    Roy Wilson
    designrw@bellatlantic.net

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