My USB 750mb zip drive and mandrake 9.2

[newbie4ever]

I got a recent computer with a motherboard that supports USB 2.0 and a new USB 750mb zip drive. I tried plugging it into my computer in the usb port, but I don't see it show up where my cd rom, floppy, and windows are mounted. I cannot get it to work in windows 98 either, because it doesn't look like the USB drivers work, even though I installed all the latest software from iomega. I'm not going to install xp on my system, I had a horrid experience with it and thats why I started getting into linux.

[newbie4ever]

I could not find a way in Hard Drake to choose drivers for the USB adapter

(sis7001/7002) on the PCI bus. The manufacturer SiS did not have drivers for download from operating systems different than Win2000/XP. Of course, LSPCI finds them, but I can't find a way to test them "as they are" (without plugging in the ZIP drive, which has its own "mount utility" that crashes). How do I tell if it's my USB port's fault or the ZIP drive's fault if I have trouble?

LSMOD shows "usb-ohci" as "unused". This implies that something is "missing" like a driver.

My BIOS only had enable/disable options for USB 1.0/2.0, and by default both are enabled.

IOMEGA's program acts like I did not install it right, in fact I can get a help listing with the command "iw" but the main command line "iomegaware -m" is not recognized by bash.

[pmpatrick]

My regular usb zip drive shows up as /dev/sda4. Try manually mounting it from the command line there. Open a console and su to root. Then run:

 

# mkdir /mnt/zip

# mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip

 

See if you get any error messages. If not, see if you can write to the drive with:

 

# cd /mnt/zip

# touch test

# ls

 

If it worked, you should get a printout of the "test" file from the ls command. if you get this far and everything works, post back and we can set up an entry in fstab to give ordinary users read/write access to the drive.

Edited December 25, 2003 by pmpatrick

[newbie4ever]

there are no "sda#" in the "dev" directory on my computer. The "/proc" directory contains references to usb ports, but no zip drive or sda mentions: "/proc/bus/usb/001/001", ".../002/002", ".../003/003",

".../drivers" , ".../devices".

[pmpatrick]

If you have the drive plugged in it should be there; if not it won't. Your post isn't clear to me. Do you crash every time you connect the device? Have you installed the iomega linux tools? You should be able to mount the device without them. Post your output for lsmod and I'll compare it with mine. Check your /etc/modules.conf to see what modules are loading. Here's mine for comparison:

 

alias sound-slot-0 es1371
probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd
probeall scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi
alias eth0 8139too
alias /dev/nvidia*   nvidia

[DragonMage]

And then, there is a possibility that it is hardware problem or BIOS problem. Have you checked it by plugging another usb hardware into the computer and see if it is detected? Have you try checking whether there is a newer bios file for that motherboard?

[newbie4ever]

could it show up as an "hda"?

[newbie4ever]

I read the startup screen, and the messages "starting us-ohci [OK]" and "mounting us file systems [OK] appeared. Normally this would be a good thing.

 

Unfortunately, the usb drive still doesn't show up on /dev or on /mnt, which is confusing. Browsing /dev with console was somewhat confusing, as there were plenty of familiar devices (/cdrom for example) but a large number of other devices or nodes. I read a bit about chars, blocks, and fifos, but I am still nervous about creating nodes that don't attach to anything.

I browsed the directory in Konquerer and somehow it had more description of what things were, for example that hda's were the HD on the IDE port. I found no mention of USB anything, and a lot of still undescribed "MD" objects (operating system memory maps?), "TTY" objects (which somehow I've heard relate to serial ports, but there are 100 which is too many for my USB ports), and other odd ones. They include CUA, FB, FD, PTS, PTY, RAW, RD, SHM, SR, TTS, VC, and VCC (power?!). I don't know if the presence of a node necessarily means that some hardware has been detected.

I could try mounting these, but it might break something.

 

There are no objects for "EHCI" or "OHCI" or "HCD", if these meant something.

There is a folder for USB but no nodes inside or below. I am tempted to create a node by hand, but unless the OS does it, it may not help anything.

 

As I have mentioned, USB shows up in Harddrake but has no means of affixing a driver to it. It also does not quote the "/dev" or "/proc" folders that relate to this hardware.

(but is still very useful for PCI things). Is it a problem that the USB is on locations 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 multiplexing a PCI slot, it would look wrong for most things but it is serial so it should not need 32-bit data/address lines.

 

In modules.conf, the lines read "probeall usb-interface usb-ohci"

and not "probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd". I am tempted to change the line but if the OS does not do it, it might not make a difference.

 

Finally, "/proc" contains a folder for "/usb" which contains "/001/001", "002/002", "003/003", "devices" (empty), and "drivers" (empty). Interesting. I could try adding "usb-ohci" as a line to the empty document "drivers" but I have no idea what to list under "devices".

 

So the primary issue is, I either have no "device" or just can't find it.

[pmpatrick]

Let's back up a minute. This thing isn't being detected in windows 98 or linux. If you have the right iomega software installed in win 98 it should definitely be picked up. I have a usb 2.0 external hard drive that works fine in win 98se. I suspect a hardware problem and the first place I'd check is the usb cable. Next try changing which usb port you connect to. If your using an external usb hub, do not connect the device there; connect to the usb ports on the box. Some usb devices will not work if connected to an external hub.

 

Double check your bios setup. I'm suspicious here as well. The usb 1.x linux driver for intel and via chipsets is UHCI. OHCI is the usb 1.x controller used by most add on cards and motherboards that use chipsets other than via or intel. For usb 2.0, you need both the EHCI driver and either the UHCI or OHCI driver. Your only loading one, the OHCI driver. If usb 2.0 is on in your bios, the linux should automatically load the EHCI driver.

 

Can this device work on usb 1.1 as well as usb 2.0, i.e. can it operate at the slower usb 1.1? If so, it should be picked up in both windows and linux even though it would only run at the slower 1.1 speeds(1.5MB/sec vs up to 60MB/sec) if usb 2.0 is not properly activated.

 

Your getting anomalous results in linux and windows and to me that points to a hardware problem. Check the cabling, check the bios, and if you have another box you can test the drive on do so to make sure it's working properly. It could just be a faulty drive.

[newbie4ever]

Finally. I got it to work, and Mandrake properly mounted it upon boot.

It turns out that my front USB ports were broken, and only the rear ones work.

So there was no "sda4" when the drive was plugged in in the front, but there was when

I connected it to the back ports. It was a hardware problem all along. My apologies for the trouble.

[Pzatch]

Sorry to hear about the hardware problem but its great that you got it working now.

[Sarissi]

Thank you all! This sort of thing of working through a problem here, lets everyone see a possible solution, and know that the Zip 750 works in Linux (which I was wondering about).