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README.ppa (c) 1996   Grant R. Guenther,  grant@torque.net
README.ppa (c) 1998   David J. Campbell,  campbell@torque.net


         The IOMEGA PPA3 parallel port SCSI Host Bus Adapter

                     as embedded in the ZIP drive


This README documents the Linux support for the parallel port version of
IOMEGA's ZIP100.  The ZIP100 is an inexpensive and popular, but relatively 
low performance, removable medium disk device.  The drive is also available
as a regular SCSI device, but the driver documented here is for the
parallel port version.  IOMEGA implemented the parallel port version by
integrating (or emulating ?) their PPA3 parallel to SCSI converter into
the ZIP drive.

I have implemented a low-level driver, ppa.c,  for this parallel port 
host bus adapter, thereby supporting the parallel port ZIP drive as a 
regular SCSI device under Linux.

It is possible that this driver will also work with the original PPA3
device (to access a CDrom, for instance). But, the PPA3 is hard to find 
and costs as much as the ZIP drive itself, so no-one has actually tried
this, to the best of my knowledge.

The driver was developed without the benefit of any technical specifications 
for the interface.  Instead, a modified version of DOSemu was used to 
monitor the protocol used by the DOS driver, 'guest.exe', for this adapter.
I have no idea how my programming model relates to IOMEGA's design.
(One technical consequence of this method:  I have never observed a
SCSI message byte in the protocol transactions between guest.exe and
the ZIP drive, so I do not know how they are delivered.  My working 
hypothesis is that we don't have to worry about them if we don't
send linked commands to the drive.)

I'd like to thank Byron Jeff (byron@cc.gatech.edu) for publishing his
observation that the 'guest' driver loads under DOSemu.  His remark was
the stimulus that began this project.

For information about using the ZIP drive, please read the generic
instructions in the SCSI-HOWTO and the man pages for the normal disk
management tools,  fdisk, mkfs, mount, umount, etc.  There is a mini-HOWTO
circulating concerning the use of the normal SCSI version of the ZIP
drive, most of its comments will apply to disks connected through the
ppa driver as well.

>------------------------------------------------------------------------<
David Campbell writes:

Since the original was released by Grant several people have made many minor
modifications:

        a) Support for EPP
        b) Autoprobing known parallel ports
        c) Parallel port sharing with other devices (see notes)

It has been found that the JAZ Traveller also uses the VPI0 interface chipset
(a reworked ppa3). This driver will also support this device without
modifications.

Please note that the ZIP Plus drive uses a VPI2 interface chipset (VPI1 never
made it out of the Iomega development lab). A driver for this device exists,
check my web page at http://www.torque.net/~campbell for further details.

                                 -<-->-

Built-in drivers accept parameters using this LILO/LOADLIN command line
syntax (omitted parameters retain their default values):

        ppa=base,mode[,sg_buffer_size]

For example:    ppa=0x378,1

The modes are as follows:
        0       Autodetect mode
        1       work in standard 4 bit mode
        2       PS/2 byte mode
        3       EPP mode, 8 bit
        4       EPP mode, 16 bit
        5       EPP mode, 32 bit

If ppa is built as a module there is currently no method of changing the
operation of the driver. Basically there is no need (unless you have a very
strange parallel port address).

                                 -<-->-

Using the ZIP drive and a printer either requires two parallel ports (one
for each device) or use of the parport driver (which can be found in the
2.1.x kernels).

In the first case compile the lp driver as a module and load it after ppa.
Alternatively specify which ports the lp driver should use by the LILO/LOADLIN
options:
        lp=base0[,irq0[,base1[,irq1[,base2[,irq2]]]]]

                                 -<-->-

Mainboard buggy chipset hall of shame: [information courtesy of Iomega]

        National Semiconductor PC87306 rev ID 0x70, 0x71
        Winbond xx837

The above chipsets are known to have problems using EPP. Note that the
National Semicondutor problems only affect early batches of PC87306 which
should really never made it to market (a run for mainboard developers).
>------------------------------------------------------------------------<