Parallel Zip 250 and Epson printer fight

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July 8th, 2001, 01:58 PM
JTT

Parallel Zip 250 and Epson printer fight

I passed on an old Epson Stylus Color 600 printer to a friend who was running an Iomega Zip 250 on the parallel port of his IBM Thinkpad.

I didn't realise that I should have daisychained them, first the Zip into the parallel port, then the printer into the Zip.

So I shut down, disconnected the Zip and connected the printer.

Now he can't access the Zip drive. Both he and I have tried to detect it for several days now. We've deleted every trace of the Iomega and Epson software from the computer, removed the parallel port in Device Manager and then restarted and let Windows reinstall the drivers, even reinstalled Windows 98.

No matter what, the computer refuses to believe it has a Zip drive connected to its parallel port.

It doesn't seem to be a hardware problem, though I haven't tested the Zip drive on another computer; there's nothing visibly wrong with the drive or the cable. But the computer seems to have it set in its little mind that no Zip drive is connected to its parallel port.

Can anyone suggest anything I haven't already tried? (And don't say go to the Iomega and Epson help pages; I did everything on them, first thing, without success. And I've done everything an Iomega tech support guy suggested as well.)
July 8th, 2001, 10:02 PM
Wildman6971

You have installed the iomega software again. I take it. If not you can just install the guest part of all that Iomega stuff and see if the drive is seen by the software program. With out having to load all that gobbly gook.

Have you tried changing the the port setting in the BIOS to ECP or EPP to see if then the drive is detected.
July 9th, 2001, 02:31 AM
JTT

Yes, I changed the port settings, as was recommended by, I think, the Iomega site (I did everything on both Epson and Iomega's help sites).

The Iomegaware software installs itself automatically, rather than giving me the option of being Guest. How can I do that, please?
July 9th, 2001, 10:33 AM
Sowulo

Just run the file guest9x.exe (guest.exe from DOS) from the Iomega folder or driver disk.
July 9th, 2001, 12:36 PM
JTT

Oddly, the Zip is seen by Device Manager, but it thinks it's a SCSI. Under SCSI Devices Device Manager (this is Win98) lists three Zip parallel port names, including a Clik. It's definitely a parallel port device that I'm trying to reinstall - so why does the computer think it's a SCSI?
July 9th, 2001, 06:39 PM
Wildman6971

Its' just a port emulation it's not really a SCSI device.
That's normal.

Try going into safe mode and removing all parallel ports and the like.
Unistall all software for both devices. make sure to remove all entries from the registry as well. MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR REGISTRY FIRST !!!!!

Then install one at a time and see what happens.
July 9th, 2001, 06:40 PM
Larommi

Quote:

Originally posted by JTT:
<STRONG>Oddly, the Zip is seen by Device Manager, but it thinks it's a SCSI. Under SCSI Devices Device Manager (this is Win98) lists three Zip parallel port names, including a Clik. It's definitely a parallel port device that I'm trying to reinstall - so why does the computer think it's a SCSI?</STRONG>

That is the way it is shown on mine. I think it has to do with how the driver is written. Since the printer port technically is only designed to be run as a printer port I think they call it scsi to simplify things.
July 10th, 2001, 01:30 AM
JTT

How do I go into safe mode when I'm starting? F8 or something, is it?

And how do I edit the registry? And if I make a backup - called registrybackup.something? - where do I keep it, and how do I replace it if it goes wrong? Will Windows even start if it goes wrong? DOS and me are not close friends.
July 10th, 2001, 08:45 PM
Wildman6971

Got to start button, click on help and type in "registry" w/o the quotes,select your
sub-topic. You can do this with all the things that I stated earler.
July 10th, 2001, 08:57 PM
KWB Teck

Quote:

Originally posted by JTT:
<STRONG>How do I go into safe mode when I'm starting? F8 or something, is it?

And how do I edit the registry? And if I make a backup - called registrybackup.something? - where do I keep it, and how do I replace it if it goes wrong? Will Windows even start if it goes wrong? DOS and me are not close friends.</STRONG>

Yes F8 durring Boot/Reboot will give you the boot options menu.

To back up your regestry. Run Regedit. Select Registry, Export registry file. Although it's sound advice to always backup your registry, as long as you remove the device entries through Device Mangler you should not need to.

Specifically look for duplicate devices. If any are found delete ALL of them, not just all but one.