Zip/printer -- Pseudo-problem mysteriously solved!

[Benjamin Sher <sher07 bellsouth net>]

-- Dear friends:

While waiting for an answer, I decided to do a little more reading on
this Zip subject and to experiment very conservatively. I have learned
to be very wary and skeptical of any "intuitive" hunches based on the
ignorance of a newbie. 

I remembered the episode of the missing /bs storage partition (bs
seeking /bs), when all I had to do, after custom reinstallation of the
master Linux drive hda, was to recreate the /bs drive (which completely
fills my slave Linux drive hdb) and add it to fstab and, bingo, all my
files and data on /bs reappeared out of nowhere. 

So, I began by creating a subdirectory /zip under /mnt, namely,
/mnt/zip, which is the first step anyhow. Then the strangest thing
happened. Being in a playful mood, I decided to:

#cd /mnt/zip.

No problem. No error message telling me that there is no such directory
or that I had not mounted it. Of course, the Zip cartridge had been
previously (before this latest reinstallation of my system) partitioned
and formatted and a file system had been created for it. Not believing
my eyes, I decided to go on and copy a file from /etc/ to /mnt/zip. No
problem. I then printed the copied file on screen from the zip drive.
And there it was: the entire file on screen. 

I couldn't believe what was happening. I then tried to print to paper
(lpr myfile.txt) from /etc and then printed a file from /mnt/zip. No
problem. I thought I was having hallucinations. I decided to try the
ultimate: to print from the hard drive while SIMULTANEOUSLY copying a
file from /etc to /mnt/zip. Again, no problem. I did this several times
in total disbelief. I was using both modules. Both modules were
apparently recognized by Linux 5.2 (2.0.36 kernel) and then, to top it
all, I was using them both at the same time. And no entry whatsoever for
the Zip drive in fstab. In fact, I wouldn't know what kind of device to
call it or what values to enter for it (defaults or 00). Well, no point
in fixing something that ain't broke.

And no mounting or unmounting. No problem popping out the cartridge or
popping it back in (I just did that again) Now I popped in a new
cartridge, which had never been formatted, etc. as a Linux cartridge.
When I did an "ls" it showed (#cd /mnt/zip, then #ls) the same three
files as the first Zip cartridge did. Fine, I figured that was in the
memory or something like that. But then I copied a file to it from hda:

#cp /etc/inittab /mnt/zip  [unformatted cartridge].

#cd /mnt/zip

There was the file "inittab"!

#cat /mnt/zip/inittab.

There it was, the entire file.

#lpr /mnt/zip/inittab

It printed it out on paper.

What is going on?

I had from the beginning assumed that RH Linux 2.0.36 could NOT run both
the printer and the Zip drive without special configuration and
certainly not simultaneously as in Windows (or as in the new Rh 6.0).
That's what the books and the RH manual said. I had therefore set out to
try out different strategies to solve a problem that apparently never
existed in the first place, at least not on my rather humble Pentium
166, making things only worse (by adding an alias scsi_hostadaptor,
adding an sda4 entry in fstab, etc.). 

I cannot for the life of me figure out how this is possible unless Linux
recognizes my Zip drive automatically as a default hard drive or
whatever. I haven't the faintest idea except to assure everyone that
every detail is true. I've tested it over and over again. And it always
works perfectly.

I am thrilled, of course, to say the least. But could someone please
explain to me what is going on?

Yours,

Benjamin
(a.k.a Marco Polo)

Benjamin Sher
sher07 bellsouth net
Sher's Russian Web
http://www.websher.net