Broken Zip drive

[MacJunky]

PS when I come to try it out, should I download the IomegaWare drivers for any of my Macs, or will it plug and play on OS 7.6, 9.1 and/or Tiger?

I have found that you need drivers with at least 9.0 or 9.1 and lower. Of course it will partially work with Apple's drivers if you have a disk in while booting but once you eject it you must reboot to get it to play nice with other disks. Though I have noticed that the iomega extensions from my 9.2.2 G4 install CD seem to work in 9.0 and stuff, possibly 8.x as well but my memory is a bit fuzzy there.That is just what I have noticed with all of my Macs, dunno what others have found.

 

[wally]

PS when I come to try it out, should I download the IomegaWare drivers for any of my Macs, or will it plug and play on OS 7.6, 9.1 and/or Tiger? (both the Scsi and USB one will work on the G3, so do both SCSI and USB need/not need drivers for 9 and X?) I was a little concerned that those drivers might add a ton of extensions to my slower Macs, so would prefer to avoid them unless absolutely necessary.

Okay, after some research, this is what works for me.

On 7.5.5, and 7.6.1, only a single extension, Iomega Driver version 4.2, 79K, needs to be installed. I believe that this extension will work for 6.0.8 and 7.1 according to my notes but cannot guarantee this.

On 8.6, it comes with Iomega Driver 6.0.2, should plug and play

On 9.2.2 it comes with Iomega Driver 6.0.8, should plug and play

On OS 10.3.9 the internal G4-400MHz Graphite Tower ATAPI Iomega Zip is plug and play, I have not yet tested my SCSI Zip on the SCSI out of the adapter card under either OS X or classic mode. I don't own a USB Zip.

And as you might expect, the SCSI devices all should be powered up before the Mac is powered up so they can get polled and initialized. Provided the driver is enabled and there are no SCSI ID conflicts, inserting media should cause an Icon to be mounted to your desktop with the usual properties of opening, dragging and dropping. Eject media by dragging to the trash. The front drive eject button is for ejecting media that is inserted without a powered up Mac. Amongst my modern Macs and PCs I have standardized on PC formatted ZIP media to keep things simple. The Iomega Tools that come with 8.6 and 9.2.2 in Apple Extras do some extra things that are strictly optional.

If you download the complete Iomega software package off the Internet particularly for the PC printer port parallel interfaced Zip drive you may get more than you bargained for. Days after I downloaded such a package on a Windows 98 machine I discovered a keylogger on my system!

 

[The Macster]

Right, I've found the Iomega Driver 4.2, which will work with 7.6.1. The other classic Mac OSes that I have around are 9.1 and 9.2.2 - what driver should I install on there? You say "it comes with" a driver - do you mean the OS does, and presumably you have to install it as an extension, as I don't currently have any Iomega extensions around? Iomega recommend "IomegaWare 4.0.2" for OS9, but that looks quite bloated and so best avoided as my Macs are mostly slow models anyway! Presumably it's better to use an older driver that is standalone - is this 6.0.8 one good, should that be on the OS9 CD or something? Or can I get the newest driver but just extract one extension or something from it so that I get the most up to date driver but without all the extra bloat?

As for the keylogger, presumably you got that driver from a site other than Iomega itself? I have found that the parallel drive is plug and play anyway on Windows, at least on XP+, as I've never installed any driver for it.

 

[wally]

When I said "comes with" I meant that it should be somewhere on the MacOS installation disks and is either an installation option or automatic if a zip drive is present and possibly automatic even without one, I forget.

Since you have 4.2 test the SCSI Zip with it first under System 7. Then, go look at your 9.1 and 9.2.2 extensions folders. If the Iomega Driver extension is already there, you should be good to go. If not, the question is how to extract one from the installation tome files of 9.x...

Perhaps the easiest way is to have a working SCSI Zip powered up for a newer Mac to recognize during a clean install of 9.2.2 and with luck it will do the right thing and put Iomega Driver version 6.0.8 into your new extensions folder. It's probably on the installation disk but hidden somewhere in a tome. Once you have one copy you can just make floppy transfer copies for earlier machines. I think due to a non-clean reinstallation regression accident I have Iomega Driver 6.0.6 from an earlier 9.1 installation installed on a PB1400c machine now running MacOS 8.6 and it works with my SCSI Zip. And I do not think it was downloaded from the net, but either got there from the initial install of 9.0.4 or the upgrade to 9.1 installation step, with a Zip drive possibly connected during the install for other software installations.

I forget the details but I determined I will have nothing to do with bloated IomegaWare. Just the driver extension is all you need, and if you find a version that you like just extract it alone from the IomegaWare file collection.

Don't remember from where I did the W98 download, and it could have been the browsing while locating the download that infected my system, who knows? In any case I've only seen this just once in many years of surfing, and now prefer to surf on Macs only. My Windows machines now get pressed into service for three instances: 1. When I can't get an important page or video to load on any browser on my Macs; 2. When I need to configure a WiFi device that comes with configuration software, non browser type, running on PCs only. 3. When I need to help someone with a Windows issue (I was Mac only until several years ago when I met a ladyfriend with a PC and some computer difficulties...).

 

[The Macster]

Thanks - I'm pretty sure there's no such driver on my Macs as I went through the extensions to remove ones I don't need and don't remember seeing any Iomega ones. I will try in 7.6.1 first though, as the Zip drive is probably still dead Hopefully if I do need to get the OS9 driver it will be possible to extract the relevant extension from the IomegaWare package, if the one extension is all that is needed - I only have two OS9-capable Macs and both are already set up with it so I can't do a clean installation. My next mission is to scavenge some Zip100 disks

 

[MacJunky]

You could try a clean install onto a disk image then grab what you need off that.

 

[The Macster]

Mission report: this morning's recovery of three Zip100 disks from Freecycle successful!

 

[wally]

Behavior of my Zip Plus drive, SCSI cable not connected to anything:

1. Connect the power plug to an empty zip drive.

Both green and yellow lights should come on, and the yellow one should go out after one second. Alternate depressions of the power/eject button should extinguish, then light the left green indicator. Press the power button to extinguish the green light. There should be no other audible sounds up to this point.

2. With the green light out, insert a zip cartridge fully.

Both green and yellow should light. The yellow should immediately blink quickly for one second then go out, then come back on after the disk is spun up to speed and accessing begins, then go out again and stay out. The green should stay on throughout. The spindle motor should continue to run. But some accessing noises should cease after several seconds.

3. Press the button once.

Motor noises should cease. The yellow light should come on blinking, then the zip cartridge should be enthusiastically spit out.

4. Press the button once more. The green light should extinguish.

5. Disconnect power. Insert a zip cartridge. Insert a paper clip in the manual eject hole at the right (viewed from the back) rear corner of the back plate: the cartridge should manually eject.

6. Insert a zip cartridge. Reconnect power. The cartridge should remain in the drive, spin up and be accessed. Press the button, the cartridge should be ejected.

(I prefer not to power down with a cartridge inserted to avoid any possibility of a write glitch.)

I do not have a regular SCSI Zip handy at the moment but your drive hopefully will behave something similar to the my plus model...

 

[The Macster]

I just tested the USB one and the disks that I got today, and that all seems to work fine - I won't be able to test the SCSI one for a few weeks though, sadly I suspect that may be the one that is dead as it was in such a poor state when I got it (and of course it seems to be the SCSI ones that are the hardest to find)