I am having a problem where PC format zip disks are sometimes not recognized in the lab macs I administer. They are all beige G3s. If I remove the front bezel and press the physical eject buttom on the drive, the disk ejects just fine but no software method seems to work to eject the disk. It seems to only happen with PC format disks and not consistantly. Rebooting the machine (sometime multiple times) seems to fix the problem for a while. I have tried changing the load order of both the IOMega extension and the PC exchange extension. The Macs are running system 8.5. Anybody have a problem similar to this?

Steve Crump
Lab Administrator
University of Cincinnati

[wlonh]

which version of the Iomega driver are you using and is it the Apple driver that MacOS installs by default or is it the Iomega software installer version?

you should try using only the Apple MacOS Iomega driver, i forget which version number it should be/is for your OS, nor am i sure if you should use the most current Apple version of the Iomega driver as i have not owned a Zip drive in quite awhile and delete that stuff when it gets installed by MacOS

[Simon Kornblith]

You could try downloading USB Mass Storage support from http://til.info.apple.com/ to replace the Iomega Driver with. It may or may not work in this case, IIRC it couldn't format zip disks in DOS/Win95/FAT format for me, but they may have fixed that.

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Simon Kornblith
Computer Consultant
Programmer

[Zwilnik]

Also, update to 8.6(.1) as it's more stable (and bug fixed) than 8.5

[CyberDave]

My $.02:

I have seen a somewhat similar problem occur on my school's B&W G3 w/an internal Zip.

Here's what seems to happen from my point of view: The disk goes into the drive and clicks into place, but it doesn't go in all the way or I push it in too hard or something and the drive fails to recognize that the disk has been inserted. Thus, I cannot eject the disk or do anything else to it. No software solution (that I could find) would take care of the problem. A restart or two holding down the mouse button would eject the disk and allow me to try again. If I am careful and gently insert the disk, making sure to push it in 100% of the way, I don't have this problem. I'm not sure, but I think i have the lastest Iomega drives installed on this machine. Don't know if this is the same problem as what you are describing, but it could be b/c it is probably the same IDE Zip drive in both machines.

Hope this helps.

Dave C

[beacher]

Hey CyberDave! I just learned that if you hit "option 4", you get a "�" sign!! Cool, huh? I knew it had to be there, but I had to ask!