SCSI on the small and cheap

[Chuck Guzis]

On 5 Dec 2010 at 15:20, Roger Merchberger wrote:

> ISTR something about the fact that the parallel zip drive was
> basically a SCSI device internally, but used level shifters or
> whatever was necessary to make it I/O compatible with the parallel
> port.
> 
> If I'm not mistaken, I think the driver even "talked to the drive"
> with SCSI commands over the parallel port... but I could be full of
> condensed milk.
> 
> However, if one were to attempt to reverse-engineer that device, it
> might be old and/or slow enough to glean some clues on how to
> interface parallel -> SCSI...

This was discussed some years back in the Linux fora when the Zip 
drive was considerably more popular.

The command set is, in fact, SCSI for the parallel ZIP, relying on an 
ASIC called the "VPIO" chip.  I don't think there's any practical way 
to bypass it to turn a parallel ZIP into a SCSI one.

--Chuck