BIOS support needed for Zip250 IDE?

[SUOrangeman]

I recently snagged and installed one of those $35 Zip250 ATAPI drives from Office Depot, replacing my Zip100 ATAPI. I connected the new drive in with the same settings as the old (slave on secondary IDE channel). My other devices are a DVD/CDRW combo on the primary master channel and two hard drives on an ATA66 controller (Soyo 6BA+IV mobo).

Until the behavior with the Zip100, the motherboard assigns the Zip250 with the drive letter C:. Unfortunately, this messes with the boot order (which I did not change, CDROM->A:->C: ... and would work with my ATA-66 config). I've tried all of the boot orders with no luck. The Zip250 always gets lettered, preventing my hard drives from being seen.

My only resolution (and what I currently use) is to connect the Zip250 to my ATA-66 ports (possibly slowing down one of my HDs).

Do any of you have a similar situation? Must there be some Zip250 ATAPI support in the BIOS such that it never gets assigned C:?

-SUO

 

[bacillus]

in most modern bioses you can change the detection of the zip in bios from auto to zip which may solve your drive lettering confusion.

 

[Jiggz]

The zip does not have to be detected in the bios since it's software loaded. You can set "None" in the Bios for the Zip and it will still be loaded by the OS upon boot up. Make sure the Removable option is checked under device manager.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Jiggz, the BIOS detects the darn thing anyway ... even when I set that channel to NONE ... and still assigns it to C: ! I'll have to check to see if there is a ZIP selection.

-SUO

 

[SocrPlyr]

i know this will probably not help you but here is what i found out from talking to iomega.
iomega told me to disable the bios from finding the zip drive completely (they don't want it to be found) and then just install their drivers and it will be picked up by them and they said that 99% of problems will not occur if you do this "correct" setup... the only problem is that half the mobo bioses find the darn thing anyways haha oh well good luck man
Josh

 

[SUOrangeman]

After mucking around in my BIOS for a while, I just gave up. WHile on the ATA-33 ports, the BIOS always found the Zip25) ... even if I selected "NONE" within the BIOS config. Thus, the drive always got the C: drive designation, rendering things useless.

Granted, everything is fine when I connect the Zp250 to my ATA-66 port. So, I am not at a total loss. Hopefully, my dual-Athlon board from Asus won't have this problem.

Thanks for input anyway!

-SUO