This is the README for ziptool.1.0.I.tar.gz [Download] [Browse] [Up]
ziptool v. 1.0 README (c) Alexander Wilkie 1996 October 3, 1996 1. Purpose To make life easier for those of us who have an Iomega ZIP drive installed in their NeXT Machines and who frequently encounter the proprietary software write protection Iomega choose for their product. 2.1 Features In version 1.0 ziptool can just do three things: - report the write protection status of a ZIP disk - write protect a ZIP disk - remove the write protection from a ZIP disk 2.2 Install /usr/local/bin or wherever you want. Has to be run setuid root (chmod 4755). ziptool is Intel only at the moment. 3.1 BUG: - It's still so dumb that it doesn't notice if there is no ZIP disk in the drive. 3.2 Testing Tested for Intel hardware only. Ought to work for other architectures once I attend & fix some compiler warnings about endianness ;-) 4. MISSING features: - support for password read/write protection - GUI support via WM.app service - automatic unmount/remount when write protection status changes (so that even WM.app notices) At the moment you have to eject/re-insert the disk for changes to become visible. DON'T TRY to write to a disk once WP is enabled. WM might get upset. 5. Trivia This tool was knocked up during one night, and I'd never done any SCSI programming before. At 9 pm someone told me where to find the proprietary ZIP commands involved (the source code for a LINUX tool that basically does the same things), at 10 pm I had the SCSI2_Kit by Christopher Wolf et al. ftp'd, and, well, now it's ready for upload. So much for - OOP, object re-use and extensibility in general - Objective C in particular. (ziptool is written in ObjC) I'll make the sources available once they're more complete. 6. Plans 4 the future As soon as I get around to doing it I'll add the bits mentioned in section 4. Meanwhile, send bug reports & comments to wilkie@cg.tuwien.ac.at enjoy! A.W.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.