New Zip and Jaz Cartridge Testing Tool!

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marciot

Tinkerer
Nov 13, 2021
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I don't know how many people use Iomega Zip or Jaz drives with their vintage Macs, but my latest project has been to port Steve Gibson's amazing Windows 95 Zip drive and cartridge testing utility, Trouble in Paradise, to the Mac.

I now have a way to test the health of my Zip drives and cartridges right on my vintage Mac!

You can read more about the project at https://github.com/marciot/mac-tip. I am trying to gauge interest in this, so please comment and star the project if you would like to beta test this!


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Elemenoh

Elemenoh

Active Tinkerer
Oct 18, 2021
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Very cool! I recently just got a couple of Jaz drives and a stack of disks. Will give this a shot to test them out.
 
M

marciot

Tinkerer
Nov 13, 2021
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Well, it just figures that all the enthusiasm is for Jaz drives, rather than Zip drives, because that is the bit I haven't fully implemented yet. I should be able to add Jaz support in the next few days!
 
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eric

eric

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Sep 2, 2021
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scsi.blue
I have a few external and internal zip 100 drives. And a few with the click of death! Happy to give it a try.
 
M

marciot

Tinkerer
Nov 13, 2021
19
96
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Hello everyone, I have published the first beta release! This one has the code for the Jaz drives enabled, but is untested. Please see this discussion to download the file and report your findings! If you have a moment, also consider also starring the repository! Thank you!

Please be aware that beta testing carries a small risk of data loss, so volunteer only if you have non-critical cartridges for testing!
 
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splorp

splorp

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Oct 31, 2021
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I’m happy to report that the 0.1-beta-nov27 release runs under Mac OS 9.2.1 on my Power Macintosh G3. I’m running tests on several Zip disks this afternoon and will report my findings in the aforementioned discussion.

A couple of initial observations:
  • TIP does not like DOS formatted Zip disks, reformatting as Mac makes a world of difference
  • Although Jaz drives appear in the Command Console (and can be interacted with), the media is not recognized in TIP itself

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marciot

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Nov 13, 2021
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@alxlab: I'm not sure if Steve would be willing to open source SpinRite, as I suspect he might still make money out of the sales. I think there are other obstacles to porting it to the Mac, however.

"Trouble in Paradise" was pretty an ideal candidate for porting to the Mac:

  1. It talks to the drives using SCSI, which is well documented and supported on the Mac.
  2. It is written for the Windows GUI, which maps more or less nicely to the Mac UI
So, while porting TIP was a lot of grunt work, there was not anything super difficult technically about it. Now let's talk about SpinRite.
  1. It runs from a CD and pretty much is its own operating system.
  2. It uses its own low-level device drivers to do some really clever low-level things with IDE disks.
  3. It uses a text-based interface.
There are absolutely no analogues of the Mac for any of these things in early Macs. To the extent that TIP was an ideal candidate for porting to the Mac, I think SpinRite is the anti-candidate. I can't even begin to imagine how mind-boggling hard it would be, if not impossible, to port it to the Mac.

It may be possible to take some of the ideas from TIP, and some of the high-level ideas Steve talked about in his video about SpinRite, and make a tool that exercises Mac SCSI drives and maybe does some limited degree of recovery on them. It won't be SpinRite, not even close, but, maybe, it could still be a useful tool.
 
M

marciot

Tinkerer
Nov 13, 2021
19
96
13
I know some of you here were wanting to use TIP with a Jaz drive, so I present you with the first test of "TIP for Macintosh" on an Iomega Jaz cartridge and drive! This is with the December 3rd beta release!

 
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