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  1. Agustin's Linux Manual
  2. Multimedia & Hardware Installation
  3. About the Author
  4. Contents
  5. Multimedia
  6. Default Audio Setting
  7. Audio Application
  8. The Play Directory
  9. The Equalizer
  10. Options Sub-menu
  11. Movies & DVDs
  12. Starting Xine
  13. Video Conferencing
  14. GnomeMeeting's Main Window
  15. The Desktop
  16. Office
  17. Networking
  18. Multimedia Submenu
  19. Web Browsers
  20. Installing New Hardware
  21. Loading Modules for Hardware
  22. Introduction to IDEs
  23. Tweaking the Hard Drive
  24. Setting (U) DMA
  25. Installing a CD/RW
  26. Floppy Disk, Zip Drives
  27. Installing USB Devices
  28. Fire wire IEEE 1394
  29. Using the CD-Writer

Floppy Disk

A floppy disk is recognized as fd0 or fd1 if you have two floppies. All you have to do is mount it in order to be used.

  • mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

That's it; just make sure the floppy directory exist.

Installing Zip Drives

Installing zip drives may be as simple as plugging it in and mount it or it may become a nightmare. Pay attention to what you are doing, most zip drives and CD-ROMs are preset as slave from factory. I recommend using your IDE zip as slave; a simple way of avoiding problems is have all the drives configured properly before the installation.

But of course, having all installed before installation is not always the case, and only troubleshooting thing makes you an expert. As I already mentioned zip drives are treated as SCSI devices, but if you install it as a slave next to the primary hard drive, it will be seen as hdb. If you have it connected as slave in the secondary IDE channel, it will be seen as sda4.

An example, my system is configured as follows:

Primary IDE channel:
  • Western Digital 40.0 GB drive      hda1
    -With multiple boot, Linux 9.0
    -Windows 2000 Professional
    -FreeBSD 5.0
  • A 16x DVD ROM          hdb
Secondary IDE channel:
  • CD-RW 24X      scd0
  • IDE ZIP 100       sda4

To see what is installed in the system type the following command

  • dmesg | more

This command allows you to see page by page.
A very effective way of finding out the correct device name is by running the control center in graphical mode and browse to hardware list. Select the hardware click on it. You should be able to see the details about the hardware on the right panel.
If you have a zip drive already installed when you are installing Linux; then during installation, two driver modules were installed that make your zip drive work.

  • ppa this driver is for older zip drives and used mostly for parallel zips
  • imm this driver is for mostly new drives including IDEs' 100 and 250MB drives.

There are two ways to load the modules:

  • Type modprobe ppa or insmod ppa
  • Or modprobe imm or insmod imm

Any of the two commands above will load successfully or will complain; that only means the modules are available for use.

Find the correct device name with dmesg or by using the control center and use the following command to mount the zip drive. Make sure you have a zip disk inserted.

Create a directory mkdir /mnt/zip

  • mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/zip

Make sure the directory zip exists. If no errors were generated with mount, you've got it. Now you should be able to read the content of your zip drive in text or graphical mode.

If everything works fine the easiest way to create a mount point is by using the control center to add it in to the fstab.