Slow Zip 100 Parallel & Canon BJC5100 Problems

[gshuster]

:-(

Zip 100 parallel is painfully slow. (100MB can easily take an hour to x-fer) Tried on built-in port on ABIT KT7-RAID MB, & also on second port in ISA slot. Used WIn ME default driver, as if I use any Iomega drivers, I lose the printer & get printer not found errors. This whether I use the built-in port or the second port.

128MB RAM, T'Bird 800, ATI 32MB Rage Fury Pro video, latest BIOS & VIA flashes.

Any ideas? Iomega & Canon are useless.

 

[paulwood]

This may not be real helpful, but I just added another printer port on a card and used the Iomega drivers. I have a Zip drive on one port and a Canon BJC2100 on another and both work pretty fast.

Most printers these days use bi-directional communication and the Zip seems to seriously get in the way. Other than the above, I've never found a consistent solution.

 

[gshuster]

I've tried that & it doesn't help. Maybe there are some settings in the SCSI section of Control Panel/System that will improve the speed. I've seen some examples on the Iomega site, but those settings just made things worse.

 

[paulwood]

Do you have the Iomega parallel port interface drivers installed under SCSI adapters? Also worth checking is what type of printer port you are running the Zip through. Is it Standard, EPP or ECP, you will have to check in the BIOS settings for your on-board port. Try each one to see if it makes any difference, from memory the Standard setting works best, but I may be wrong.

Because of the length of time taken to use the Zip, and assuming for the moment there are no hardware faults, a resource or driver conflict sounds like a real possibility rather than a SCSI problem. I assume there are none reported?

 

[gshuster]

Tried all settings for parallel port. No improvement.

The Zip parallel driver installs as a SCSI device. That's why I thought there may be some setting there I could use.

But it doesn't explain why, when I use the Iomega drivers, I lose communication with the printer!

 

[safraser]

I've had many clients with this problem, althought this may not help I tell not to use a extranal zip becase it does seem to cause problems

Also how old is the disk you're using, I could be wrong about this but I heard that after a while zip disks become very hard for zip drives to read.

 

[paulwood]

Oh boy, how stupid am I! I was checking my setup and remembered I was running the Canon through USB and thus a virtual port, sorry! However if that is not possible for you read on....

Looks like you've done all the sensible things, but there is something in the back of my mind about a Canon Multipass Printer/Fax I came across. When installed it installed drivers on all lpt ports and stopped a laser printer working. The fix was to manually edit one of the system files, maybe system.ini or win.ini to release the port not being used. If this is the case, maybe it is important which is installed first. If I can remember the details I'll let you know.

Presumably the RAID bit in your MB description is built in RAID support. Is this SCSI, and do you use it. If you don't, I would be inclined to turn it off in BIOS to see whether the SCSI is causing a conflict, the zip drive should function perfectly well with the standard Windows drivers, so I suspect something of this sort.