SuSe 9.1 Pro versus Zip 100 USB

[dunbar]

I'm needing to understand which software steps are needed to convert a Zip 100 meg USB device into /dev/sda4 (SCSI drive). Seems like more than one 'device conversion' needs to take place, to get from USB to /dev/sda4, but I've no ideas how this is accomplished. Anyone familiar with the deeper configuration methods for SuSe 9.1? Links to appropriate and recent topics would be appreciated too (I'd expect that SuSe 6.2 instructions is too different to apply to my SuSe 9.1).

The only SuSe docs I've read (TIDSuSE184) have failed to explain it to me (I followed it while generating the following items).

LSMOD shows the proper uhci and usbcore modules.

When I grep dmesg for USB, I see several messages, including "USB Mass Storage device found at #" replace # with whatever number it was found at.

LSUSB lists the Zip drive.
I've tried both ziptools (provided by SuSe) and Iomegaware (Iomega software) to mount the drive, but I get responses that the drive is not accessable (ok, a little more detail: ziptools says no entry for sda4 in /etc/mtab or /etc/fstab; iomegaware says much less, something like cannot mount device).

I used a SCSI command (the exact name escapes me right now), and that command was supposed to get info about /dev/sda4; instead that command said that /dev/sda4 was not a valid block device.

Worst part is: this drive has worked perfectly for exactly one boot of SuSe, not before, not since; also, DSL 0.9.2 finds the drive and reads/writes without issues.... IMO, the hardware is not flaky if DSL uses the drive.

Any ideas where I'm losing the path to Zip-ness?