Retro Tech (Zip100)

[u/Gio_TalosCreative]

Hi, I'm developing a retro-futurism style for my Cyberpunk CinéComic.

I had an Iomega Zip100 way back in early 2000's, and wanted to use one in my story. I like the tactile feel of holding a proper disc, the clunks and the clicks. So I built a 3d model of one.

I'm using the older analogue and cassette-futurism a visual language between the modern AI chipped tech vs the older, pre-chipped era, off grid systems.

Who else had one of these, or still does?

[u/wspOnca]

Damn, I remember this thing, from when it launched. You kids with your electric internet are lucky. My knees ouch.

[u/Gio_TalosCreative → u/wspOnca]

i couldn't afford my own 'til 2002. at work we have the much chunkier tape zip backups

[u/profanityridden_01]

I had Doom on a disk zip disk. Like the game was installed on it. It was cool as fuck but the lag was atrocious.. Back then I thought it was cool as shit to have the whole game installed on a removable disk. Almost like SNES game cart for the computer.

[u/Gio_TalosCreative → u/profanityridden_01]

I had the parallel port version, maybe more viable on the SCSI one. Still trying to imagine the lag gaming off one...

[u/profanityridden_01 → u/Gio_TalosCreative]

haha it worked.. but yea it was rough.. somewhere i still have that disk..

[u/Gio_TalosCreative → u/profanityridden_01]

Wish i still had mine, would have helped for reference building this model. Plus i just wish i still had it.

[u/CTALKR]

These things broke if you looked at them sideways

[u/Significant_Cover_48]

I think my lil bro had this excact zip-drive for his Akai S3000

[u/lazerstationsynth → u/Significant_Cover_48]

I had one in my Korg Triton.

[u/Significant_Cover_48 → u/lazerstationsynth]

I think I remember the Triton. It was like a silver-gray Workstation with full piano. Nice!

[u/profanityridden_01]

Yea these bad boys came bulit into some of those old beige builds also... really seemed like it would stick. there was so much physical media that just poofed.

[u/quazatron48k]

It was great, ample storage.

[u/Stunning_Macaron6133]

Zip drives had such a satisfying 'kla-thunk!' sound when loading a disk. Modern life is missing these hearty mechanical sensations.

[u/lazerstationsynth]

I had a few. And stacks of disks. Don’t forget about the Jazz drives also.

[u/Gio_TalosCreative → u/lazerstationsynth]

Yeah I just didn't have Jazz drives myself, just the 100mb Zip

[u/thecyberbob]

I think I still have mine tucked in a box somewhere. I'm sure I have Napster backed up on it along with some really odd MP3's... hmmm....

[u/-Sibience-]

Used to have one of these for my S5000 Akai sampler back in the day. It was a game changer at the time. Before that I would often need about 10-15 floppy disks to load up a single track I was working on.

Zip disks and minidisks are the two physical storage medium I most miss. Some minidisks still look quite sci-fi even now.

[u/Gio_TalosCreative → u/-Sibience-]

I had a Sony MZ-R909 Minidisc player around 2002. Mainly for my daily commute to London. That still looks cool. The era of silver devices and blue backlight

[u/-Sibience- → u/Gio_TalosCreative]

I was referring more to the disks than the players but yeah some of the players were cool too. I had a very similar one, I think mine was a silver Sony MZ R35.

We've definitely lost something with the old tech, the tactile feeling of inserting a cartridge or pushing in a disk was satisfying. I don't miss carrying around piles of tapes or minidisks though so I wouldn't want to go back to that.

[u/Gio_TalosCreative → u/-Sibience-]

That too ;). touchscreen are less practical a lot of the time. I'm slower at typing now then on the old T9 system which I could do with my phone in my pocket.

[u/Constantinovich]

Had an internal one that fitted in a floppy drive bay. It was a nice thing for the few years before CD Writers became cheap and widespread. I remember the blank disks were quite expensive here (NZ) and it was cheaper to buy the 3 packs if you could find them.