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SCSI Zip Drives?

rjkucia

Well-known member
I recently got a USB Zip drive that came along with a bunch of other stuff, so I thought getting a SCSI one would be a good way to moving files between my SE/30 and modern machines. Unfortunately, it looks like SCSI Zip drives are relatively rare (at least to find working models). What's been confusing me is that there are a ton of parallel models that advertise themselves as being SCSI. Is this just eBay sellers mixing up terms, or do parallel models actually work over SCSI?
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
There are a lot of eBay sellers that can’t tell the difference. At one point I was specifically searching eBay for SCSI Zip drives and notifying all of the sellers of the non-SCSI models that they were parallel.

You can fairly easily tell the difference because SCSI models don’t have a printer icon on the back. The mixed parallel /SCSI models usually say “Plus” in the model name on the front and the SCSI ID switch is missing if I recall.
 

rjkucia

Well-known member
Thanks - so there are some models that *do* do both? I'll be sure to check for the "Plus" and switch, in that case.

As a side note, I've noticed a lot the drives listed lack PSUs - I'm assuming they're standard barrel jacks and not some goofy proprietary thing?
 

bibilit

Well-known member
Thanks - so there are some models that *do* do both

Yes (The Plus as said before) but they do have a special cable to handle the feature, and are not as good as the SCSI units alone.
Moreover, they are pretty thin on the ground.
 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
im not sure the exact power requirements for the 5v PSU but id suggest something closer to 1.5A to 2.0A.
it might just be that my particular unit is wearing out however every time ive used a 1A PSU (tired a couple btw) I couldn't get it to read disks or show up in scsi manger reliably
 

rjkucia

Well-known member
To wrap this up - I ordered a SCSI model, works great - it came with a power adapter, and by that I mean a USB to barrel jack adapter lol. But that works! It does take 2A, I checked the adapter I do have.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
To wrap this up - I ordered a SCSI model, works great - it came with a power adapter, and by that I mean a USB to barrel jack adapter lol. But that works! It does take 2A, I checked the adapter I do have.
That's awesome! Don't be tempted, though, to get used disks on eBay to use. That's where you could run into problems. Always buy brand new disks.

Enjoy the vintage storage solution! It's chock full of nerdy ASMR.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
To extrapolate on what MrFahrenheit said, bad disks can damage your drive - when they misread, the head resets aggressively and over time causes permanent damage to the drive and it stops reading disks!
 

rjkucia

Well-known member
To wrap this up - I ordered a SCSI model, works great - it came with a power adapter, and by that I mean a USB to barrel jack adapter lol. But that works! It does take 2A, I checked the adapter I do have.
Correction - it should only require 1A, that's what the adapter is rated for. Not sure why I said 2A.

To extrapolate on what MrFahrenheit said, bad disks can damage your drive - when they misread, the head resets aggressively and over time causes permanent damage to the drive and it stops reading disks!
Oops - already got 4 cheap disks off eBay, haha. I did get a new/sealed one as well, so I'll try to just use that one. Thanks for the advice!
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
Correction - it should only require 1A, that's what the adapter is rated for. Not sure why I said 2A.


Oops - already got 4 cheap disks off eBay, haha. I did get a new/sealed one as well, so I'll try to just use that one. Thanks for the advice!
There’s some anecdotal evidence that the click of death was initially caused by sharing of Zip disks between units that might have slightly different drive head alignments.

One disk written on one drive, aligned slightly differently when read inside another drive. That head, having trouble reading the other drives disk, bangs itself and eventually throws itself out of alignment.

I’d suggest, if you are going to use the used disks at all, use the Iomega tools app to reformat the disks with verify /full erase. If there are any alignment issues it might weed them out.

However, if at all possible, avoid the used disks. You can check some by inserting them and immediately listening for the weird click reset. Have your finger ready on the eject button and the second you hear a head click, eject the disk and discard it. If it mounts without the weird double clicking sound, it MAY be fine, reformat using the app. At the first sign of clicking, immediately eject and toss.

Personally, though, risk of damage to the drive isn’t worth a handful of $1.50 disks.
 

rjkucia

Well-known member
Side note about ejecting - is that eject button supposed to work? Because as far as I can tell, I can only eject from software. Unless there’s a trick to it?
 

rjkucia

Well-known member
I’m formatting all the disks because they came IBM formatted, but the point of this project is to transfer data using the SCSI drive and a USB drive - are you saying that doing this may cause issues?
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
Side note about ejecting - is that eject button supposed to work? Because as far as I can tell, I can only eject from software. Unless there’s a trick to it?

The eject button can be used when the Zip drive is powered on, before the Mac OS loads. It can also be used if you insert a disk, and the mechanism has trouble reading the disk, you can hit that eject button and it will eject it, providing the disk hasn't been mounted on the desktop yet. Otherwise, it would seem to not work as the Mac OS prevents those disk ejection buttons from working on a mounted disk.

I’m formatting all the disks because they came IBM formatted, but the point of this project is to transfer data using the SCSI drive and a USB drive - are you saying that doing this may cause issues?

Potentially. But I haven't seen it happen myself between two drives I own and use. Which is another reason brand new disks would be best. But, I've seen used disks format and work just fine in a pair of drives, too. It's just a higher risk, that's all.
 

Big Ben

Well-known member
From what I read and observed, Zip disks have pre-recorded alignment tracks (4 iirc), those are use to align the heads while reading or writing a disk. The zip drive can’t handle alignment without it

If a disk happened to have those tracks damaged it can make the drive do a « click of death », and to some extend damage or misalign the heads.

I’m looking to protect one of my recently repaired iomega drive from the click. Early drives had a bumper on the head axis to avoid any damaged when the head was pulled of the disk after an unrecoverable error. It was removed (as a cost saving measure?)
Need to find a non working drive to get that bumper. I don’t want to risk my espon drive.

Damaged disk are a plague. Seeking new disks is worth it.

Since consumer ZIP drive are unable to calibrate by itself, you can’t fix a disk with damaged alignment tracks. And I’m not even sure it’s capable to actually write such track beside the calibration problem.

I don’t know if the is some way to check a disk health, last time I used iomega tools was probably in the last century. Oh god…
 

Corgi

Well-known member
I ran the click of death verifier on my Zip disk collection some time around 2006. I have no idea if any of my new(ly acquired, old stock) drives are going to read them or not, but since I have three internal IDE and only one SCSI, I think one of the IDE drives will be the sacrificial test to see how it goes reading my old disk collection.

And then I have a shrink-wrapped set of 10 disks to have fun with :)
 

chelseayr

Well-known member
thoiught I'll add my own comments too..

my two zip drives (only one is still around atm) both ended up with homespliced power cables only because mm well I hate goddamn wall warts especially when it comes to powerbars or ups's but yeah like techstep said its just a normal dc jack for the drive end itself (although the 'L' shape is not exactly an easy one to find replacement for on other hand, assuming you had wanted to retain the original 'notched power trench' feature on the side of the drive)

and @bibilit you're right, the zip 100 plus drive had a bit of autosense circuit that was suppose to be paired with a certain iomega blue cord. even then I suspect that its original market it was 'just good enough' as most setup likely barely even had more than one or two external peripherals to daisychain (even then I am very sure that I think apple did quote no more than 3 scsi devices on the db25 scsi rear of any performa's, forgot which pdf I had seen that in now tho)
 

bibilit

Well-known member
I don’t want to risk my Epson drive

How many of those white Epson drives were actually made ? probably the only one missing in my own collection, never seen one advertised nor for real.

iomega blue cord

I have one of those with a bunch of cables, even if i never had the actual drive myself.
 

Big Ben

Well-known member
How many of those white Epson drives were actually made ? probably the only one missing in my own collection, never seen one advertised nor for real.
I’ll ask my father who bought it back in the day. I assumed it was the official thing but I rediscovered it was an epson few days ago. I assume it was bundled as a ZIP drive for Mac because IIRC it was shipped with a bunch of Mac ZIP disk. Had been bought around 1994/1996 I’d say.
 
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