When I booted the computer this morning, there were no updates waiting so I launched my e-mail and took care of a few things there. After a while, I decided to tackle the daunting task of making the ZIP drive work. I referred to http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=29441
which contains a ubuntu forum with directions on how to get the ZIP drive to work. The directions were slightly hard to understand. First I don't know if I am using hoary or warty (and personally neither of those sounds very good) and it didn't tell me how to check. I just rolled with it anyway, couldn't make it worse than not working so... Some of the steps were a little confusing so I have re-written them here without the extra info. Read the original article for details.
1. Open up a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal)
1a. At the prompt, type "sudo mkdir /media/zip0" without quotes
2. Next type "sudo ln -s /media/zip0 /media/zip (can be skipped if you don't mind having the 0 on the end of your drive reference)
3. Look in System -> System Administration -> Device Manager. Scroll down and find the ZIP drive. Click the Advanced Tab. There should be a line that says 'block.device' and something like '/dev/hd*4' (Where * depends on what IDE control your drive is on) Write this down but replace the * with (a,b,c, or d) the correct letter.
4. There is not a step 4 on this page...
5. In the terminal window, type "sudo gedit /etc/fstab follow the logic given, you will see lines for /dev/hd* There will be two or three of them depending on how many other IDE Drives are in the system. Going in alphabetic order, add a line
/dev/hd*4 /media/zip0 auto rw,user,noauto,sync 0 0 (replace the * with the correct letter)
Save the file and quit Gedit to return to the terminal window
NOTE: I had problems on this step. I started out with the line at the bottom of the list and tried to format it like the other lines. It did not work. I moved it to its alphabetical order location and formatted as shown above and it worked.
6. At the terminal prompt, type "sudo mount -a" (without the quotes)
If you have a disk in the ZIP drive when you boot the computer then you are ready to go (that means put a disk in and reboot the computer now to get it to work) There is a solution to this problem, but it did not work for me and it appears that you have to implement it every time you reboot the computer so I just ignored it. It is easier just to make sure I have a zip disk in the drive when I boot.
It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, but even with the more detailed explanations I have no idea why what I did works. There are several commands in there that I do not understand since I have never worked with a LINUX KERNAL before. People without much computer experience would be completely lost and I doubt they would feel very comfortable following these directions.
