This is very cool stuff. Thank you for developing and preserving this knowledge.
Using a magneto-optical drive should be pretty much the same, I imagine.
I am partial to the Fujitsu DynaMO 640 drives. I sometimes find them for under $20 at Goodwill. The 640 MB disks cost about the same as a ZIP disk and are about the same size. However, there's no concern about ever getting the click of death or having the media die on you.
Back when Zips were current technology, I always thought that 640 MB MO should have been in the position ZIP was. MO was much more reliable, the media cost about the same per disk with the same form factor and each disk stores 6 times as much as a Zip. However, the Zip drives cost about half what an MO drive did, and low cost of entry is all important in consumer marketing, even if the cost of ownership is much higher.
But these days, with a little hunting one can often turn up a superior SCSI MO drive for no more than a Zip drive would cost.