Warning about Iomega Zip Drives on eBay being advertised as SCSI (Z100S) but actually being Parallel port (Z100P) versions

[MrFahrenheit]

WARNING!!! (PSA) Iomega Zip 100MB drives listed on eBay as “SCSI” are not always correct, and can be the PC/Parallel port variant. The SCSI version is model Z100S and the parallel port is Z100P. Connecting a Z100P drive to a Mac will result in damaging the onboard SCSI controller.

Years ago I was buying some Zip drives for my Macs on eBay and received parallel port drives. I discovered a large number of Zip 100 drives are incorrectly listed. Over the years I’ve been going through eBay and looking at Zip 100 drives listed as SCSI and notifying sellers they are not SCSI when I find a z100P drive listed as z100S.

Today alone I found 9 listings of parallel port drives with a SCSI description. The problem is people who know zero about computers finding a similar looking drive and “list like this”.

Note, there is a variant called Zip100Plus, which can be connected to both a Mac and Mac using a special cable. That’s not the model under discussion here. You can verify the drive is a Plus by seeing “Plus” on the front logo and bottom.

If a parallel port device is connected to a SCSI controller, the different pin out of the device will result in damaging the SCSI controller, rendering it unusable after that point. Meaning, in your purchase a Zip 100 P drive and plug it into your Mac, your Mac will not longer have SCSI, meaning it will no longer boot.

Back of Z100S:



Back of Z100P:



This is a public service posting, and if you find an eBay seller (or other marketplace) and they have it listed wrong, feel free to point them to this post.

 

[ClassicGuyPhilly]

Great info thanks for sharing!

 

[joshc]

Yup, noticed this before. Happens quite a bit. Usually I tell sellers and sometimes they correct their listing but quite often they don't.

On a sort of similar note...

On Buyee (Yahoo Japan auctions) a lot of things are listed as being Ethernet cards for Macs which are not. Often they are entirely different cards, or Modem cards. Be sure what you are buying is actually an Ethernet card, if that's what you're looking for.

I've even seen someone try to sell a PC keyboard but claim that it's an AppleDesign Keyboard (ADB) - it was very clearly not an AppleDesign at all, but the item title and description described it as such. I messaged them but they didn't update the listing.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Yup, noticed this before. Happens quite a bit. Usually I tell sellers and sometimes they correct their listing but quite often they don't.

On a sort of similar note...

On Buyee (Yahoo Japan auctions) a lot of things are listed as being Ethernet cards for Macs which are not. Often they are entirely different cards, or Modem cards. Be sure what you are buying is actually an Ethernet card, if that's what you're looking for.

I've even seen someone try to sell a PC keyboard but claim that it's an AppleDesign Keyboard (ADB) - it was very clearly not an AppleDesign at all, but the item title and description described it as such. I messaged them but they didn't update the listing.

A few months ago I saw a touch screen device that was listed as for Macintosh on eBay. I looked it up and the manufacturer made two variants, an ADB one for Mac, and a PS/2 one for PCs. You almost couldn't tell which one the seller actually had (they look identical). I messaged the seller and asked for better photos, and sure enough, they had the PS/2 variant. I messaged them back and told them they needed to revise the listing, it was PS/2 for PCs not ADB for Macintosh, and they got offended. Told me not to tell them what to do with their eBay store, and even if it was wrong, they didn't need to listen to me.

It remained listed as for Macintosh and I hope someone didn't buy it with that expectation (can't find it now). Sometimes sellers can be very annoying.

I've gotten messages back from Zip drive sellers whom I've messaged, telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. They then provide links to other eBay sellers who have made the same mistake as evidence that they're right, and I'm wrong. Which is stupid, because like I said above, in the past 24 hours I had found 9 eBay listings that were incorrect, and I contacted those sellers to let them know. One has already replied saying I don't know what I'm talking about, and they got the parallel port Zip drive working on their 2003 Mac...

 

[cheesestraws]

Be sure what you are buying is actually an Ethernet card, if that's what you're looking for.

ISDN cards are particularly bad for this, because they often have RJ45 jacks on the back, and people assume that means they're ethernet.

 

[Phipli]

One has already replied saying I don't know what I'm talking about, and they got the parallel port Zip drive working on their 2003 Mac...

That's impressive.

 

[Phipli]

ISDN cards are particularly bad for this, because they often have RJ45 jacks on the back, and people assume that means they're ethernet.

Yup, seen this.

It's ok, these days the only affordable cards are AUI, so it's better to invest in AUI to 10baseT transceivers

Although those are constantly mistaken for video cards now that I think of it...

 

[mmmlinux]

Yeah I noticed this a while ago too. They even list the wrong model numbers. Ive seen them with the box that says for PCs parallel in big letters and they still list as SCSI. I've also seen drives listed as plus models that are just the parallel version.

 

[olePigeon]

Just to add to the confusion, there's also the "Plus" version of the drive that does both parallel and SCSI.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I once saw a near-dead battery in an overpriced listing for an old laptop pitched as "a convenient way to give yourself a few seconds to save your work if the power goes out"

They also claimed that the laptop (from 2001, Pentium III) was "great for small business".

 

[cobalt60]

Just to add to the confusion, there's also the "Plus" version of the drive that does both parallel and SCSI.

what does the back of that one look like?

edit : theres one listed on eBay as a Zip Plus, and it appears to have the SCSI-ID select switch, but not the termination switch. And the bottom lacks the diagram showing either a SCSI cable or Printer cable.

 

[TonyJay]

what does the back of that one look like?

edit : theres one listed on eBay as a Zip Plus, and it appears to have the SCSI-ID select switch, but not the termination switch. And the bottom lacks the diagram showing either a SCSI cable or Printer cable.

 

[Iesca]

Additionally, the Zip100 Plus requires its unique "AutoDetect" cable.

 

[bibilit]

Iomega didn't help much on this matter to get information clear and not misleading.

Same casing, same color, same connectors same product name...

When you know what you are looking for, this is pretty easy, both switches on the back are a clear indication of what kind of drive you have in hands.

But when you don't and just look online....

At some point i get some parallel units to repair SCSI ones (the head assembly, casing, PSU are all the same) and P units are plentifull and cheap

 

[Daniël]

Yeah, this is a pretty annoying thing with online sellers. I'd basically just avoid buying any drives from listings that do not show the back of the drive, especially if the buyer isn't willing to provide photos of the back afterwards. And while you can sometimes find diamonds in the rough from sellers using poor photos and descriptions, caution around such listings is a healthy way of doing business!

 

[chelseayr]

@bibilit i know what you mean about not doing anything visually different (yet silly enough they did make two very different looking 2gb jaz drives, a good example of what maybe should had been done to the early zip drive?)

on that footnote, i think that partially the scsi-vs-parallel blame really lays outside iomega as well tho .. parallel apparently was introduced well before 1980 then scsi for in 1986 but umm ok yeah if parallel was db25 in the first place then how come scsi had to decide to be exactly physically the same db25 too without even using any kind of blocker pin/notch or anything? (meanwhile thankfully centronic ports were incompatible on purpose weirdly enough, c36 for parallel versus c50 for scsi)

 

[chelseayr]

@Daniël i'm sure everyone has long lost track of how many times they were looking at pretty much almost any sort of ad/auction for dense electronics and wondering along the line of "what does it come with??" from the lack of any kind of rear photo. computer, tv, av receiver, etc you name it! worser is showing 6+ different front and frontish photos but like 0 photos of anything remotely for the rear side ugh!

 

[Melkhior]

if parallel was db25 in the first place then how come scsi had to decide to be exactly physically the same db25 too without even using any kind of blocker pin/notch or anything?

Blame Apple for a cost-cutting decision there...

SCSI wasn't using DB25 ; it was using much larger 50 pins Centronics connector with physical lock (e.g. such as this) or even larger DB50 (e.g. this). Later SCSI-2 switched to a much denser 50-pins connector (e.g. this). They all have 50 pins, and all have at least one ground pin for every signal pin. Apple choose to switch to a much cheaper, more available DB25 with shared grounds (because 25 pins wasn't enough for dedicated grounds). At the time, no-one else used those for SCSI that I'm aware of.

Wider SCSi switches to 68-pins connector, and 80 for some power-carrying connector (e.g. SCA, Single Connector Attachment).

 

[chelseayr]

@Melkhior hmm I do have to wonder indeed, considering that a lot of relatively expensive peripherals also decided to use db25 too (this was one particular tidbit I found out while I was just looking up re early scsi ports before making my recent post above https://gearspace.com/board/electro...43-scsi-port-types-samplers-synthesizers.html thats quite a lot of db25 choices in there..)

 

[chelseayr]

@MrFahrenheit just as a small more-ontopic addendum: I agree that sellers who just simply randomly clone listings then "suggest" that you know nothing are annoyingly ignorant but I guess thats a particular flaw of human behaviours in general tho, or as one aptly can refer to the classical example of that one restaurant/hotel may have 30+ people that gave it a good rating and just one person then gives it a sour bottom rating then before you know it the one single bad review soon causes a lot of comments/rants online just because of this one single person