Hello,
I have successfully virtualized the floppy disk that came with my IOMega Zi pdisk Drive Parallel Port version.
The idea was to transfer data via this zipdrive without using network techn ology.
The idea was to download the guest.exe software and such to run it inside m s-dos or maybe even a virtual machine. The idea was to download these zipdi sk drive drivers from the internet, since my dreampc has no more floppy dis k drive and also the cd-rom drive is more or less dead, at least drive bay.
However there are many fakes on the internet, or incomplete distributions, there is one older version out there which is version 3.3 or something and it's probably clean but because it's so old I kinda don't trust it, that ve rsion is from 1995.
The version I have is from 1997. Also my version has NT support and the rea dme.txt says version 5.1 but the label on the disk says 5.3.
So this software I have is quite rare. There might also be scammers on e-ba y trying to sell these disks, but they might not be genuine, mine is.
Later I might upload some youtube videos to spot maybe fakes and such and a lso to prove that I do have the original equipment and software and such.
There is also a zipdisk utility disk with additional software, but I have n o interest in that for now, I might also upload that at a later date or may be not at all. So far the zipdisk floppy is enough to get it working.
Anyway so I decided I was going to use my own trusted software, the floppy disk can't even be written to, because it's always in write-protected mode, it cannot be put into write mode, cause the plastic thingy that needs to b e moved is missing which is kinda cool.
I also used a copy of the floppy disk for actual real world use, so the ori ginal floppy disk was little used and is in pretty good condition.
So I decided it was time to cheat a little bit and virtualize this floppy d isk on the pentium 166, by downloading new software and try a virtualizatio n attempt with winimage and such.
So I downloaded this software, send it over to the pentium 166 with my udp file transfer program ;) which was working flawlessly which is great. I also pulled the power on the cable modem, so no internet just to be compl etely save.
Turns out winimage 9.0 doesn't work on windows 98. So contemplating what to do, the easiest option was to try winimage 8.1 and yes this version does w ork.
So success ! Zipdisk floppy virtualized, then send it back to main computer /dreampc from 2006.
Copied the files/virtual floppy disk image, extracted it with winimage, cho ose to extract with pathname otherwise default it will not extract the winn tstuff folder which is kinda stupid.
Copied it to fat16 on usb drive, booted into ms-dos, tested the software, w orks great.
Then went back into vmware, added a parallel port, booted ms-dos inside vir tual machine, used the real parallel port and run guest.exe and voila !
Zipdrive also working inside vmware under windows 7 x64 edition which is qu ite cool.
So this is a neat trick to get zipdrive working in Windows 7 64 bit edition , amazing !
It might also work in the free virtual box from oracle so you could try tha t out as well, haven't tried with oracle's solution yet.
I also downloaded an f-prot virus scanner with virus definitions from 2009, since date/time was reset on pentium 166 it will nag about date exceeding virus definitions but it does work.
If date/time is to new the program refuses to run which is kinda funny and stupid at the same time, either change date on virus definition files or si mply change system date with date command.
I tested f-prot to see if it could detect the junky virus, boot sector viru s, which was on one of my old floppies and indeed f-prot detected it just f ine.
System commander warned that some kind of interrupt pointer changed, but I think that is probably date/time related cause of empty cmos battery not su re, so I think that is a false virus warning for harddisk, did scan harddis k of pentium 166 and no virus there so I think that is a false warning.
Anyway it was amazing to see this all working.
However it was kinda hard and nasty to find this exact software on the inte rnet and yes there should be more copies of this software on the internet.
So what I am going to do is, I am going to make it available to you but sto ring it on my webdrive which will hopefully remain online for some time to come:
If you are the owner of a zipdrive parallel port version and you are unsure if you still have original software that came with it, or if you have olde r versions or you are not sure, you certainly want to make sure you at leas t get this driver disk cause boy-o-boy will it save you a lot of thinking a nd a lot of trouble ! ;) =D
Would have been nice if I already copied this to my PC or stored this on th e internet a long time ago, would have saved me some troubles. But it was i nteresting figuring out how to get this working.
One more thing, finding a good, somewhat up-to-date virus scanner for ms-do s is also kinda hard so I am going to make the f-prot files available as we ll, so you can have a nice ms-dos 6.22 virus scanner ! =D
I forgot exactly what the zipdisk utility/tools disk is for... probably mor e software for windows 98, drivers or so, not sure, if anybody knows, let m e know, I might check it out, but for now, kinda tired and I already like t he current solution, otherwise you may have to use that older version that is somewhere on the internet.
Anyway time for some nice links:
Zipdisk Drive Drivers, virtualized floppy disk image, created with winimage :
General Folder:
WinImage created floppy disk image:
Floppy disk image:
(Works in vmware 8 even though it doesn't recgonize the extension ;))
Also in case you don't know how to extract these files from the floppy disk image, which can be done with 7-zip or winimage I have also extracted them and put them in an extracted folder. This is not a boot floppy disk, so yo u can just copy these files to your ms-dos drive and just work from there, or just store them anywhere you want as long as it's not on a a zipdisk ofc ourse cause you first have to load these drives to be able to access the zi pdisks ! :)
Extracted files and folders from this winimage floppy disk image:
And finally the f-prot virus scanner, I think it's legal to spread this aro und cause I think it became free or something:
Probably finest ms-dos scanner ever, not sure though, if you have any ms-do s virusses that it can't detect let me know (safely via e-mail or newsgroup ) ! ;) =D
I am going to upload f-prot in it's original form, it were two rar files th at both need to be extracted, and I am also going to upload the extracted f iles in case you don't know how to extract these, you would have to use win rar for this, but now you don't need to and just download from unzipped fol der:
Original f-prot rars files as I found them on the internet, stored on my we bdrive in this zipped folder:
Direct link to these rar files on my webdrive:
Extracting these was a little bit weird/akward, I think you actually have t o start with part2 and it will automatically extract part1 as well or maybe I am wrong about that, just try extract both and you'll see, may have to c hoose overwrite and such.
And then the unzipped/extracted folder and files which will be larger to do wnload, roughly 15 MB extracted, so I hope you not a dial-up modem or anyth ing, otherwise get the rars instead if you have winrar:
Folder:
Link to files:
Ofcourse it is essential to have these signature files, these files contain virus definitions/marks etc, it's what the virus scanner uses to find viru sses, without these virus definition files I think the virus scanner would be almost useless or not work well or at all.
Remember to set your system date to 01-01-2009 or so to make the definition files seem recent, or change their dates if you know how to current date.
Anyway I hope you enjoy this very fine software ! Try make a backup of it t oo, maybe make these files available on your own webdrive these definetly b elong on the internet or in some webarchive ;) :)
Also maybe later I upload some youtube videos to show all of this, which is pretty cool.
One last thing: I could maybe compute a sha256 hash so you have some more v erification methods, but for now this will have to do, if you know a good s ha256 hash computing tool/file verifier for windows and ms-dos or so let me know ! ;) :) windows will probably be sufficient for now.
(Ofcourse I ran into all kinds of issues doing this, but that is kinda the fun of retro =D some of these issues have been documented and work around s provided.)
Let's mention one more problem with what I want to do and that is run turbo pascal 7 software.
The runtime error 200 occurs because PC is too fast, even in vmware/virtual machines this happens.
tppatch7 solves this.
I have tried this in the past not yet but will try tomorrow:
Original web link:
But I will also upload this to my own webdrive to keep a copy of this just in case it goes offline, otherwise it will be little fun programming in tur bo pascla 7, though if the crt unit is not used the problem does not occur I think, I still have to find a good crt unit replacement though but that w ill come tomorrow, at least this patch allows you to patch exe's made with tp7 and bp7.
Link to Folder:
Link to Files:
tppatch is what I would use for turbo pascal 7 programs, the other two prob ably for borlad pascal 7 files/executables, big brother of tp7, bp7 was dos extender, 32 bit dos software or something, never really used bp7 much, we nt over my head at the time ;) :)
Anyway enjoy this great software !
Good luck and may the ZIPDRIVE FORCE BE WITH YOU !
ALWAYZZZZZZZZIP ! ;) =D
Bye, Skybuck