IOMEGA Zipdrive Parallel Port Driver ?

[Skybuck]

Hello,

There are no IOMEGA Zipdrive Parallel Port drivers for Windows 7 x64 Ultimate edition and thus I need to look elsewhere.

I believe I have Sparky Linux installed on a usb stick plugged into my computer in the back. Windows 7 x64 edition cannot read this partition, which is kinda odd, it's ext4 I guess, this is a bit unfortunate, but I know Sparky Linux can read NTFS drives and probably write to them.

So in theory if I could get ZIPDRIVE working in Sparky Linux I could move the files over the windows 7 NTFS as well.

So I have started investigating if it's possible to get ZIPDRIVE working in Linux and so far there seems to be some kind of linux driver out there... but it needs to be installed or configured or something and since I am a total linux noob I may need help with this ?!?

Let me know if you can give me any tips how to do this ?

Also my main question is:

Does Sparky Linux GAME OVER edition come aboard with this zipdrive driver ?

There is speak of an ubuntu driver, but since sparky linux is based on debain I am in doubt if that would be of any uses, though linux is linux right ? Maybe that might work as well, though installation might be slightly different or I have to switch to ubuntu... or I have to install it on drive and such... I may install multiple versions of linux for these kinds of purposes... hmmm.. also backup linux would be cool for experimentation purposes but guess I will have to backup entire partition or so... getting a bit off topic, though bad driver installs can result from this ;)

This link contains a document how to try and compile/install zipdrive drivers, might work, I am probably going to try this on sparky linux =D

https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/text/ZIP-Drive

Well since Sparky Linux is open source I believe ? I should be able to check the source files first to see if the mentioned driver software/files are there, now this is where open source is getting a little bit interesting =D

Hmm sparky linux seems to be divided/spread over many repositiries:

https://github.com/sparkylinux

My best guess in what repository this driver might be in is (core):

https://github.com/sparkylinux/sparky-core

So I will try and look in there...

Wow there is nothing in there ? WTF ? Checked 4  5 and 6 ? Weird..

https://github.com/sparkylinux/sparky-core/tree/master/4

Well now I am unsure if I am at the real sparky github or a fake one.

I check the main website:

https://sparkylinux.org/

But it mentions nothing about open source or github, no links nothing.

So maybe I am wrong about it being open source and it's closed source.

Would be nice if the website clearifies this...

Well to me it seems like the sparky linux core was deleted or something, so maybe Sparky Linux project is terminated, don't know.

But at least I can still try the already installed sparky linux.

I do however want to see this source file mentioned in text file above to see what it entails and how difficult this would be to re-produce in delphi for windows or so, so here is the file:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/scsi/ppa.c

Good to see it's still there, so I am hopefull it's also somewhere deep inside of SparkyLinux :)

(I have UFO defense on one of the zipdisks, also know as x-com =D would love to play it inside of sparky linux if possible, not sure if it has a dos emulator, but this is mostly for extracting data of of zip disks for my computer, but some entertainment might also be nice ;) =D)

Well so far there are some issues with Sparky Linux regarding zipdrive support:

1. the module isn't there.

2. the linux kernel source isn't there.

3. All tutorials seem out-dated or not suited for sparky linux.

4. I did find jazip in some kind of package manager.

Don't know exactly how to set it up, must find some kind of device first.

5. Try ppa and imm also not working.

I am going to need some kind of linux expert to make this work.

Or I must switch to ubuntu or some other linux operating system that has this, but then I might as well install windows xp 32 bit and be done with it...

Disappointed with linux and sparky linux so far.

Bye for now,
  Skybuck.