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Saturday,
February 13, 1999
We learned a few things about ZIP drives. If
you format a ZIP Disk, it can be read in the machine you formatted it in, but no others;
at least that's the case with disks formatted in an internal IDE ZIP drive. I will try it
again with a regular zip and see if that changes things. Regular pre-formatted ZIP disks
can be read in any ZIP drive we have. Those we format in an internal IDE Zip Drive can be
read ONLY in the drive that formatted them. Curious, no?
I'll see if that holds true for disks formatted with a SCSI drive, and with a parallel
drive.
Second: you can have only 166 objects in a ZIP Drive root Directory at least under
Windows 98. This is probably a universal truth I have forgotten. You can have more than
166 in a Folder on that ZIP disk.
MORE: I have found that if you use the LONG FORMAT routine which takes about 10
minutes, you can reformat ZIP disks, even MAC Disks, so that they are readable by all
machines. The rule seems to be that the "short" format routine will produce
disks readable on the machine that made them, but not necessarily on any other, while the
"long" format seems to make disks that are readable by all Zip drives.
Interesting.
Even MORE INTERESTING: If I use the LONG format routine on
a machine with Windows 95 and an internal IDE Zip, then it makes ZIP Disks with 100
Megabytes, and those are readable by all the machines in the house. If I use the new SYS
Celeron system running Windows 98 to format the disk, the long routine makes a disk with
only 99 megabytes, and it is readable only on the machine that made it. (Not entirely
sure: it may be readable on another Windows 98 machine; it is not readable on the Windows
95b machine that is making ZIP disks readable by anything. I will try the Celeron system
and LONG format; then take the disk down to Scarlet, which has Windows 98 and uses an AMD
K6-2 chip. that machine can read disks formatted by the Windows 95b machine, but not those
short formatted by the Celeron. My hypothesis is that it won't read them formatted with
the long format routine on the Celeron either; but will read those formatted with the long
routine on the Windows 95b system. Now is this a problem with Windows 98, with iomega
drivers, or didn't I hold my mouth right?
I am now testing: I am formatting long a disk on each Windows 98 machine. I postulate
that each will run out at about 99 megabytes, and while each will be readable by the
machine that made it, neither will be readable by the other. Both may be readable by the
Windows 95b machine. It will take about ten more minutes.
Curiouser and curiouser. Scarlet, the Amd K6-2, will format a Mac formatted ZIP disk to
100 megabytes; the resulting disk is readable by all the machines I have. SYS, a Celeron
system, formats that disk to 99 megabytes, and the resulting disk is possibly readable to
the machine that made it but certainly not to any other machine. Both systems have
internal IDE ZIP drives. But the really reliable machine for formatting ZIP disks is
Winnie, the WinChip Windows 95b system. And I have no idea why. It too has an internal IDE
Zip drive. I have no idea of whether this is iomega drivers, sloppy tolerances on the
drives, or a Windows 98 problem that Windows 95b doesn't have. Since I have a remedy
-- format any ZIP drive that needs formatting on Winnie -- I end the investigation here.
I do this stupid stuff so you don't have to.
The North American Science Fiction
Convention is held when the World Convention is out of the country. In 1999 the NASFIC will be in Anaheim California 26-29
August, 1999. I am guest of honor. If you have never been to a science fiction
convention and wonder what those things are like, this is as good a one to come to as you
will find...
Go visit the site, and tell them I sent you...
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