ReadMe file for ZipTools 1.00, Copyright  1997 Alun Jones.

ZipTools is a simple module to give access to the more advanced facilities
of the Iomega SCSI Zip drive.

The package is Freeware. You may distribute it freely, either alone, or as
part of your own application, under the following conditions:

1) This file must accompany any copy of ZipTools distributed - otherwise,
   how will people know how to use it?!

2) If you distribute it as part of an application which is Freeware, I'd
   love to hear from you, mainly so I can keep people uptodate on any
   improvements.

3) If you distribute it as part of a package or collection for which you
   charge, I'd like a free copy of it for myself. If you use it as a
   "sweetener" to help sell Zip drives, then let's call it "ZipWare"; send
   me a single Zip disk and I'll be happy! (This is the greed clause ;-)

4) At this point, I'd like to say in *HUGE WARNING CAPITAL LETTERS* that you
   use this software AT YOUR OWN RISK. I will not be held responsible for
   any damage to, or loss of hardware or data caused by the use or misuse of
   this software, nor by any bugs in it.

The reason for the above warning is simple: One of the functions of ZipTools
is to allow you to password-protect your Zip disks. If you protect a disk
and then forget the password, you will *not* be able to get your data back.
The only solution to a missing password is a low level format of the disk!

Similarly, if ZipTools were, in some manner, to corrupt your password when
protecting a disk, you'd be in the same boat.

All that said, I'm fairly confident that it won't set a corrupt password.

So, what does it do?

Well, it provides the following commands:

ZipID     - This lets you specify the SCSI ID of your ZIP drive. The default
            is 5. You may set this to any number, and the software will
			trust you to get it right. I thought about making it probe and
			check the device description before accepting a number, but
			decided that this would restrict the use of ZipTools for future
			compatible devices. If you set this number wrong, the results
			could be anything from boring to spectacular, depending on the
			device and it particular vendor specific commands. So be
			careful!

ZEject    - This tells the drive to eject the current disk. On my ancient
            Oak card, at least, it's possible to get the filesystem in a
			confused state by putting a DOS format Zip disk into the drive,
			such that the drive refuses to eject the disk in response to the
			button. ZEject gets around this. It's also good for lazy people
			who can't be bothered to reach for the button ;-)

ZWProt    - Write protects the current disk. If you use Wprot -p, then it
            will ask you for a password. Once password write-protection is
			set, you will be unable to modify the disk in any way without
			giving the password beforehand. If you don't use a password,
			then you can unprotect the disk without a password.

			If the disk is already password protected, you will be asked for
			the old password before the change in permissions can be made.

ZUnprot   - Unset the current protections. This restores the disk to a
            non-passworded read/write enabled form. If a password is
			required to achieve this, you will be prompted for one.

ZProt     - This protects the current disk against reading or writing. If
            the disk is already password-protected, you will be asked to
			supply the old password first. ZProt always requires a password
			to be set. Note yet again that if you use this function and then
			forget the password, the only way out will be to format the
			disk.

ZStatus   - This reports the current protection status of the disk.

ZUnlock   - This restores the permissions to read/write until the disk is
            ejected from the drive. If a password is required to achieve
			this, then you will be prompted.

Corresponding SWIs are provided for anyone wishing to write a pretty
frontend to these functions. See the file named "SWIs".

One more point: If you're setting a new password, you will be asked for it
twice and, only if the passwords match will it be written to the disk. This
is to reduce the possibility of you setting a misspelled password.

Typical usage of this software would be to protect a disk permanently using
ZProt and a password. Then, whenever you wish to use the disk, put it in the
drive, type ZUnlock, and enter the password. Then, when you've finished
using the disk, dismount it and eject it, and bingo! password protected
again!

Cheers,
Alun, auj@aber.ac.uk

Credits are due to the following people, although some of them don't know
it:

Itai Nahshon,
Grant R. Guenther (grant@torque.net),
Bob Willmot (bwillmot@cnct.com),
Mirko Kraft (Mirko.Kraft@ixos.de),
Andy Polyakov (appro@fv.chalmers.se).

The above people have written similar software for Linux and Solaris, and it
was by looking at their code that I acquired the technical details of how to
use the extra SCSI commands of the Zip drive.

The following people gave me helpful advice when I asked dumb questions on
comp.sys.acorn.programmer - thanks for your patience!

Andy Armstrong (andy@wonderworks.co.uk),
Hugo Fiennes (altman@cryton.demon.co.uk)
Birger Harzenetter (WIMPy@yeti.microdata.de)

