SCSI Zip drive

[Cory5412]

I think Travan was slow whatever you connected it to. That, and relatively limited capacity compared to DLT, were probably the things that made it semi-suitable for the home/SOHO office markets, and as an individual desktop backup tool. Before long, you could just buy an external USB hard disk that matched or was bigger than the one internally to your computer, probably for less than what Travan gear cost, and that plus burnable DVDs almost certainly killed any further notion of tape at home.

Tape still exists, but it's not something you can go out to the Egghead or CompUSA to buy in person.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The other potential advantage zip might have is if you could boot from it, which might make the need for floppies a little less urgent.

Not long ago we had threads about installing internal Zip 100 drives into Compact Macs set up so as to not eject media at shutdown. They were used as replacements for the slow, anemic 20MB-80MB HDDs shipping in that era.

Later we moved on to using modern 2.5" SCA Server HDDs as monstrously oversized HDDs for Macs in the II series and Quadras.

Now we're moving on to SCSI-SD and SSD solutions. Storage solutions both fixed and portable evolve, even in time capsule environments like ours.

p.s. unless your machines are mostly in a permanent setup, networking is a lot less convenient than SneakerNet over Zip, most especially so for the old Compacts or the IIsi where NIC pricing is prohibitive. With Zip you just rock and roll. PhoneNet just trundles along, but it was WAY cool back in its time. :approve:

 

[Unknown_K]

I am in the minority that likes using spinning SCSI disks instead of flash.

 

[Cory5412]

At this point, I would probably rather use LocalTalk on systems like the 1400 and IIsi (although, my IIsi, if it still works, has a riser card and a networking card of some sort) than bother with sneakernetting if it wasn't absolutely necessary. If I did have to use sneakernet, I'd probably end up either gravitating back toward Zip, because there's just so much of it and it's near universally compatible, or getting some newer EZ135 cartridges and another mechanism or two.

I'm still wary of those hot high-speed SCSI disks in most smaller Mac enclosures. I've had modern Macs kill much more modest disks of heat exhaustion, and enterprise disks, while they have some more durability (not necessarily all of it) were still meant specifically for environments where "cool" air was flowing directly over them on its way into the server. In bigger systems, fans and a general ability to radiate heat away from themselves should help a lot. Placing them in a SCSI enclosure with a fan should help a lot as well.

But, what I meant about booting wasn't necessarily (at least in all cases) using it as fixed storage, but rather, to use it as a way to install the OS and a bunch of apps from one piece of media that you can also use on a newer Mac.

 

[bunnspecial]

I still make extensive use of ZIP.

I was fortunate enough to be given an external SCSI drive, and it has continued to work well for me. I have a nice collection of internal SCSI and ATAPI drives(as spares for installed ones or to add a new one), along with a couple of USB ones.

To me, I like the ability to be able to transfer files from my Plus to my MBP running OS X Sierra, and of course every computer in between.

Granted Intel Macs lost the ability to write to HFS standard, but a bridge machine in the middle can solve that issue.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I think it's well past time to move this discussion into Peripherals!

 

[techknight]

I used the Zip back when it was common place basically as a quick and dirty sneakernet solution between machines, especially between home and school where floppies werent big enough to hold a full powerpoint presentation, and school newspaper documents. 

Then I also used them for quick backing up of machines before formatting, etc... 

I feel Flash drives basically are what killed the zip. It was for me anyway. I use USB sticks today like I did Zip back then. 

But Zip now is perfect on my old machines. They still make a good sneakernet solution in my environment because I have a USB Zip drive that I have connected to a more modern Mac, and of course I have a Zip module in one of my G3 powerbooks, as well as the SCSI Zip drives on my old compact machines. So its a quick easy way to dump files on there without the whole "chicken and egg" scenario of stuffit... 

 

[CC_333]

I use Zip disks for my old Macs, because a) I have a bunch of them, and B) being a contemporary of many of my Macs, it seems to be more "real" somehow.

And also, if you're going to use one as a startup disk, you can format it using the patched version of Apple HD SC Setup, and the system will treat it like a normal hard drive (no auto-eject at every restart, either!) I like formatting my disks this way so I don't have to worry about any compatibility issues with, say, the Plus (disks formatted this way work equally as well on a Plus as any other spinning disk; a disk formatted using Iomega's drivers are known to be tricky to use on a Plus due to limited support).

c

 

[FacnyFreddy]

My internal (Pismo) VST zip drive works pretty well. I get >1MB/sec of write speed and I can read/write most disks.

I was able to get NTFS-3G/MacFUSE installed under OS X 10.4.11 and can read NTFS formatted disks just fine. Only have a couple...

I loaded the latest Iomegaware 4.0.2 tools under both OS X and Classic and don't have any issues. I've only seen the "Click of Death" on parallel port units over the years.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Is yours the 250MB from VST like mine? If not, find a Zip 250 from any laptop mfr. and swap that drive into your Pismo adapter.

 

[FacnyFreddy]

I might have to try the ZIP250 swap idea... That would add some functionality, but, I don't think I have any ZIP250 disks left hanging around. Need to check.

My wife had a couple, but, I don't think we left any data on them... moved it to CD-R a while back.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Zip 250 drives work fine with Zip 100 media, unlike the Zip 750 drives.

 

[Cory5412]

Zip750 drive can read but not write zip100 media. They can both read and write zip250 media.

There's not a particularly good justification to have a 750 anyway, and you can have both drives connected to one system, but there's a migration path if you find a bunch of 750 stuff and want to use that instead of 100, or you're mostly reading archived data off of 100 cartridges.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, read/no write to 100MB media is what I meant when I said they didn't work fine (in a Zip100/68k environment) with Zip100 media. Zip750 drives are not very useful in that environment.

 

[Cory5412]

Sure, but perhaps more important than "won't read 100 media" is that the 750 was only available in ide, usb, and firewire variants.

Sticking with 100 or 100 with some 250 mechanisms would of course be better for that environment, unless you also had a lot of PPC systems that you needed to sneakernet stuff with, at which point it would probably be worth having 750 mechanisms and media. (Although 750 is different enough, in that it won't write to 100 cartridges, that it could be worth examining whether a syquest, castlewood orb, LS-120, or Jaz system would be better -- of course, you can buy 64-gig flash drives and USB SD card readers and SD media very inexpensively these days, depending on what you're using and what you want to do, that may be just as well.)

Kind of unrelated: why bother mentioning 750 at all? Nobody else had for several days. The mentions of 750 made earlier were pretty specifically in the context of what was available and reasonable to use in the early 2000s when data was growing and when having something that had some kind of migration path made sense.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It was in the context of fancyfreddy's concern (I might have been mistaken) that he didn't have Zip250 media, only Zip100 media while considering the drive swap I suggested he do to bring his VST Zip 100 up to Zip250 status.

 

[Cory5412]

Other than avoiding the click of death by moving off zip100 entirely onto zip250, is there a good reason to upgrade a working 100 module to 250 like that? It's not like this is 1999 and 9 (USCSI) or 10 (IDE) gigs is the biggest we can get  an internal hard disk in from Apple, and so we need it for projects or to offload data.

 

[Brett B.]

I had a ton of SCSI Zip drives that I got from various surplus events, but I passed most of them on to other people...I am down to a couple internal drives, and maybe one or two externals.  I never used them much.  Most of my friends and business acquaintances were/are using Windows and it was not a convenient way to transfer files from my Mac systems.  It was easier to set up an FTP server at my house and transfer stuff that way.

I also made a point to have Ethernet cards installed in every machine I have, unless there was a hardware limitation preventing it.  Even extremely slow file transfers over Ethernet are faster than file copies and drive swapping.

 

[Cory5412]

On the usefulness of networking, even slow networking:

I've been doing some work transferring files between some PowerBooks (a 180 and a 1400) and I was originally going to try to use the SyQuest EZ-135 drive, but gave that up when I realized that the Internet-faring powerBook is the 1400, and it doesn't have enough disk space to download a lot of stuff, then shutdown/reboot to switch to the EZ135, then copy, then move the whole drive over to the 1400.

I ended up connecting the 180 to the 1400 (which has a 30-gig disk, so I don't even need to use the Syquest drive) via a serial cable, and using Ethernet (Micro EN/SC) on the PowerBook 180 to download stuff from my home http server directly to the 1400's drive.

It has been an adventure. It's quite slow, but probably less slow than having to take everything down and put it back up. Perhaps the biggest problem is that it would actually be much better for me to get the 6100, 840, or beige G3 out and put it where the 1400 is. Use it as the server, and let both the 1400 and the 180 connect to it in their ways.

I have kind of been on an "if only I'd had a superfloppy!" kick of late, but the thing I very much wanted was good networking. That would probably have been more valuable, unless I was able to get a whole raftload of different drives.

 

[Brett B.]

The only machines in my house that are not connected via Ethernet are my LC475 and the two Pluses.  The LC475 has a IIe card installed so no free slot for a network card, but everything I need to do thus far can be accomplished with an external CD drive, floppies, or serial connection.  As functional removable disks (and internal hard drives, for that matter) are becoming more scarce, I have been making a point to weed out flaky drives and cartridges that I know I won't be able to replace easily, and concentrating on more common removable media.