I have just installed a EZFlyer 230MB internal IDE removable Cartridge disk
drive. I have very little experience with Zip drives and no previous
experience with this SyQuest. This is on a DOS 6.22 PC ....no Windows. The
PC is an old 486DX33 with 4 megs of ram, a 500 MB Maxtor AT IDE hard drive
that is partitioned as a 250MB primary (active), a 250MB extended with one
logical(250MB) drive running off a on board IDE controller. This is an old
controller that does not have advanced EIDE LBA support. This is a specific
purpose PC and does it's job fine just the way it is. I am just replacing a
broken tape drive with the SyQuest for backup purposes.

I installed the SyQuest as a slave to the Maxtor, manually inputted the
SyQuest drive settings into the CMOS and booted without incident. The
SyQuest was recognized correctly and I used FDISK to remove the SyQuest
primary partition and repartition it as an extended with one logical drive.
Upon reboot and format it appears correctly as 220MB E: and is fully
accessible. Every thing works very well.

My confusion arises from the manual. It states that I need to install the
drivers and utilities for DOS and or Win 3.1 setup and that I need to use
this utility to lock and unlock the SyQuest EZFlyer when removing it. There
is no explanation of the purpose of the lock unlock feature. I have no
problem removing or inputting a  cartridge into the drive.  I tried
installing the current drivers \ utility and found that the utility
assigned a drive letter to the SyQuest . A assigned drive letter creates
problems for this setup. I want the SyQuest to behave just like any other
IDE drive letting DOS assign the letter.

I have removed the SyQuest software and restored the setup I described above.
I am guessing the driver permits me to update the drive without a reboot
and to run windows but if I don't mind re-booting after I swap the drive do
I really need to install the drivers and if so why? I have no need that I
am aware of for any of the utility features so my only concern is the
locking \ unlocking feature. Does anyone know the purpose of
this.........is this just a safety feature that prevents the user from
removing a drive that is being accessed? Is it enough to make sure you are
at another drive prompt when removing and inserting a drive....and then
re-booting after the swap?

Any clarification appreciated.

Mark