Zip drive "became" floppy

[plyboy]

Howdy: Here's a curious one to challenge someone (and help me out!) [i posted this yesterday to Mobo group but now i think it's more to do with busmaster drivers...]



Got an IDE CD recorder at Costco... copied music CD ok but failed

backing up data. Manufacturer's (Pacific Digital) "tech support" as well

as software (Adaptec EZ CD creator) said i gotta disable busmatering on

second IDE channel where writer is Master (and reader is Slave, on

channel one boot drive is master, Zip is slave). They said to do it "in

BIOS" which i don't see... anyway the bmdrivers.com site (where ABIT

autoresponder pointed me) said :



>>Users who have upgraded to Windows 98 [me] may experience IDE

subsystem problems, since the Intel® BM-IDE driver may remain loaded

following the operating system upgrade. Because the Intel® BM-IDE driver

for Windows* 95 was not developed for use on Windows 98, the Intel

driver should be replaced with the Microsoft BM-IDE driver under

Windows* 98.



To replace the Intel BM-IDE driver with the Microsoft BM-IDE driver

under Windows 98, download the v3.02 driver, run SETUP, and follow the

prompts to remove the Intel BM-IDE driver. <<



I did that, and the writer now works fine...



BUT NOW the [NEC] zip drive comes up as a 3.5" floppy!! The instructions

originally said to not let the BIOS recognize the drive, i had always

left it at "auto" and let the BIOS find it no prob, now i set slave on

channel one at none and it still comes in as a floppy (though with drive

letter D instead of B when BIOS gets it ??!)...



This seems so odd to be happening with this driver change (since the

BIOS runs BEFORE the OS and i can see it finding the Zip as a floppy)...



One might suspect an older BIOS since i see that at a certain point an

update fixes a problem with this very zip device but my BIOS is

2A69KA1E and the only thing i see changed with the latest is support for

PIII (i have celeron300a@450)



Any ideas?? Thanks very much for any help!

[DaveRinPA]

I don't have a ZIP. but I have LS-120's (also and IDE device) on four different computers.

You also did,t mention is you have a regular floppy? I'll assume you DO. (LS-120 works as floppy, so no 1.44m drive required.)

The "floppy" that the ZIP drive 'wants' to become MUST BE disabled in BIOS. Then it will ONLY appear as 'D' or whatever.

To do this, entr setup on booting - - "Hit DEL (or F1, etc.) to entr Setup" - - and set the floppy (A or B) to NONE, not AUTO!!!

This should get rid of your phantom floppy.

Also, is you loaded Win98 OVER Win95, everyone's advice is to give up and reformat before installing Win98. It's just cleaner.

[plyboy]

Further curiosities: when i tried to open the "3.5 inch floppy" that was my zip, the message i got was "disk not formatted, do you wanna format it"- i figgered i got nuthin to lose (no data on it not backed up), let's see, it wants to format as 96 meg or sumpthin, OK, not 1.4 anyway... it "worked" after a fashion, as long as i only used it on my machine (not the point of a Zip, eh? Wanted to "format" any other zips i put in...

Today i finally got a call back from NEC (it's an NEC zip) after several days. Sez i need to update the Iomegaware (driver) at Iomega web site, gonna do that now, expect that will fix it

Got a response from Abit (my motherboard) too- they say to return the drive (or update BIOS to enable me to disable UDMA- i'm NOT gonna cripple my HD to get some fooshy peripheral to function)... i'll pass my info on to them for the next victim... thank you sincerely for the help.