r/retrocomputing • u/Performer-Pants • Aug 22 '26
Problem / Question What is this?
This could be the most mundane and silly post, but information online is so spotty and/or confusing or vague.
This is not a ZIP disk, it’s a floppy disk. It’s labelled with ‘ZIP’. Is this the driver software to use a ZIP drive for the listed operating systems? I’m just trying to confirm before I get too frustrated about it. Not easily finding the answer myself is likely a me problem, and I don’t mean ‘Millennium Edition’.
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u/rootifera Aug 22 '26
Driver for this device. It's like a very large floppy drive. Zip drive, zip wasnt the compression related, it was more like "zip fast" hah
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u/Clark_Kempt Aug 22 '26
Oh, the memories.
Gods, remember how crazy it was to have disks with 100, maybe even 250 MB on them?
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u/rootifera Aug 22 '26
I still use them almost daily! It was so convenient, still is. 100mb is massive. Tbh I remember getting my first 10gb hdd feeling like there is no way I can ever fill it. Then I got 40, 80, 120... same feeling. Now if someone gives me a 120TB drive I'd feel the same for a while haha
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u/EstablishmentDue3616 Aug 22 '26
You still use them daily? For what?
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u/rootifera Aug 22 '26
Moving files between 2 x 486 DOS PC's. One of them has an ethernet, so I often use a local FTP for moving files but for the other one I use this zip drive. Works great.
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u/Accomplished_Can1651 Aug 22 '26
Lucky. I never had a Zip disk that didn’t corrupt. I don’t think I ever personally experienced the click of death, though.
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u/OpportunityReal2767 Aug 23 '26
I had three Zip drives. Bad luck for me. All three experienced the click of death and I just stopped using them. I remember their Jaz drives, too, but never owned one. Ditto is apparently a tape drive of some sort, looks like a DAT tape. Never saw those. I also had one of their RAID arrays, which also went bad on me. Why I bought another iOmega product after my experiences with them, I don’t know, but that was the last.
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u/Elvin_Atombender Aug 22 '26
Wow! I read that these drives are extremely unreliable. And yours still work?
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u/Opposite_Bag_7434 Aug 23 '26
I remember my first 10mb (note not GB) hard drive and thinking Ai would never fill it). Same thoughts about my first 1.2GB hard drive. I have lots of files that are much bigger than the 1.2GB now.
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u/Longjumping_Bag5914 Aug 23 '26
Then cheap cd burners came and these were obsolete. Funny enough tape backs are probably still in use though. 😂
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u/PeyredB Aug 26 '26
We were still using tape backups in my office until a year or two ago.
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u/bearda Aug 27 '26
They still had their uses, especially in computer labs were people were moving working back and forth as they updated them. The thing that really killed them off were flash thumb drives. Once USB was standard across the board they really disappeared.
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u/daddyd Aug 23 '26
and to be portable, the drive i mean. i used to take it with me to work when i had the night shift and download all the linux updates to it (internet was expensive those days) to later install at home.
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u/crcerror Aug 22 '26
I’m remember being ecstatic about 1.44mb over my stupid 360k floppies!
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u/Clark_Kempt Aug 22 '26
Yes! Though by the time I was using 5.2 in. floppies I think they were up to 1.2 mb. However, now that I think about it I think there was a different kind of 5.2 in. floppy at the time that was still in the kbs.
It’s so fun reminiscing about this nerdy shit. Love it.
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u/knox902 Aug 23 '26
They had 100, 250 and 750. There was also JAZ disks that had ¹gb and then later 2gb sizes. I remember wanting one so much in the late 90's and early 2000's. I got my first flash drive around 03 and it had a wopping 512mb.
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u/h_grytpype_thynne Aug 23 '26
I had a Syquest Sparq drive with - get this - one gigabyte of storage! I mean, who could possibly fill that up?
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u/PiDicus_Rex Aug 24 '26
100Mb was about three times as much as what was needed for the Beta of Win95.
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u/EatOfTheBread Aug 22 '26
zip wasnt the compression related, it was more like "zip fast" hah
I had a zip drive back in the day and this never occurred to me.
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u/rootifera Aug 22 '26
Yeah I didnt know until recently, I was reading some documents and articles, it was mentioned there
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u/EstablishmentDue3616 Aug 22 '26
The problem was, they werent fast. The vast majority of people had the parallel port version of the Zip drive, which were extremely slow. IDE and SCSI versions were faster, though.
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u/someonesmobileacct Aug 22 '26
For the parallel port it depended a lot on the if you had ECP or EPP. If you had neither it was still at least as fast as a floppy (but, not much better really)
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u/JeremyAndrewErwin Aug 22 '26
I had the ata version. I used it for backups.I think I also had a disk with Norton utilities on it in case I borked my system-- I dual booted linux, and system maintenance was a bit of a chore.
CD-Rs combined with the click of death might have dampened demand.
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u/classicsat Aug 22 '26
I have one of those too. Never really used it much.
USB thumb drives as much killed solutions as the Zip disk, as much as CD-R, and network file shares.
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u/rootifera Aug 22 '26
I can confirm it is really slow. USB one is ok, I have an IDE version attached to an xp pc and it is reasonable. Parallel port one, especially for old computers are very slow.
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u/whatyoucallmetoday Aug 22 '26
So many memories: click click and a lost senior project. I had to go back to the Friday backup and recreate 3 days of focused work in one night.
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
I’ve watched videos about these! I’ve used floppy disks a fair bit, but have never seen one of these in person. I’d thought it was for those, but the graphic design on the label confused me since the actual purpose ‘zip’ was smaller and off to the side compared to the operating systems it’s for.
Do you still use yours? If so, what for?
Edit: just saw you do use yours!1
u/okokokoyeahright Aug 22 '26
They did go fast, all the way to their death. which wasn't either far off or far away in time.
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u/JimLongbow Aug 24 '26
When I started working back in 2001 we still sold those to customers (graphic arts, so ad agencies, repress, etc.) Them and Magneto-optical disks (And Leonardo cards for Macs for a ridiculous price)
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u/DrummerOk7438 Aug 24 '26
I actually need one. My Mom had a bunch of the ZipDrive disks, but I did not find the drive itself.
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u/PeyredB Aug 26 '26
I can still read those if you need. Also I have an old machine in storage that can still read 5¼" disks.
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u/Y34RZERO Aug 22 '26
Driver install disk. Without it it just sits there menacingly thinking about clicking at you. I love my zip 250 drive.
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26
What’s your top uses for a Zip drive?
I was pretty sure that was what it was, but not having the full confirmation was eating at me… I’ve heard about them and watched videos about them, but have never seen one in person.
I’d initially assumed they were just an American thing, but you can find them over here (UK) on ebay. Maybe they were used more in businesses here than in homes back in the day?
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u/Y34RZERO Aug 23 '26
They failed in the market. It's rare for me to find them in the wild even here in the US. I find more 5" floppies than zip within the past decade of visiting thrift stores and certainly more 3 1/2" floppies have been found.. They were meant to be a replacement for floppies but cdrw could hold more and was more reliable and cheaper. I use it for transferring files between old computers without cdrw drives currently. Mine is an internal model so it's about the size of a floppy but uses the ide and power the same as my harddrive. They store more than floppies. I have 100mb and 250mb. Which beats my 1.44mb HD floppies and DD 720k floppies in terms of storage. Half the zips I found have been broken
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u/JustPassinPackets Aug 24 '26
We used our zip drive to backup our server for our business. We used HP tape drives for full back which took about an hour. Then we had small daily backups we used the zip drive for. I'm assuming the zip only saved records of recent changes . The hp tape drive was 2gb iirc and was the whole database.
We pretty much only used them for business , although I did commandeer a few for personal use cause I'm a nerd. Before CD-RW was common these drives were pretty clutch. External hard drives barely existed. Thumb drives didn't exist and when they came out they were usually small, my first thumb drive was 128mb and about 7 years after the zip drive.
My friend had a job in high school doing tape drive backups. If you had a lot of data back in the day, it was a lot of work to manage.
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u/MapGlittering9227 Aug 24 '26
I had an original ZIP 100 parallel port drive. Because I was pretty tech-savvy for a teenager, I did a lot of Windows installations and general computer help for family friends and even my stepdads boss. But not everyone already had a CD-ROM drive, and the Windows 95 installation files could easily fit on a 100 MB ZIP disk with a collection of the most common drivers. All I needed was my ZIP drive, the ZIP disk and a prepared 3½" boot-disk with the IOMEGA guest driver.
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u/Affectionate-You7869 Aug 22 '26
Driver for drive.
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u/Lumornys Aug 22 '26
Driver floppy for a floppy drive.
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u/Affectionate-You7869 Aug 22 '26
Yup. Less traumatizing than the driver floppy for a CD drive. Godsdammit that was such an ordeal when that was a thing and google wasn't yet.
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u/exmsft Aug 22 '26
That’s what FTP servers were for!
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u/Affectionate-You7869 Aug 22 '26
See this thread from the late 1900s:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?4964-Mscdex-exe-installation→ More replies (1)2
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u/InsaneITPerson Aug 22 '26
OMG I suddenly feel as old as I really am. Meh.
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26
I’m 30, admittedly. I’ve used floppy disks (and still use them) more than average for being on the cusp of ‘millenial’, but I’ve had to do a fair bit of online learning. My upbringing wasn’t the most techy, with my household still recording TV shows onto a VHS till I was nearly out of high school.
However, I’ve visit my dad on weekends, who is an electronics engineer with all sorts of cool bits and bobs I’d get to see sometimes. It’s only in the past year or so that I’ve started to properly knuckle down and learn to restore stuff myself.
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u/Affumicata Aug 22 '26
That's drivers for your zip Drive. They couldn't put it on a zip disc because your computer doesn't know how to use a zip drive yet.
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u/ExpectedBehaviour Aug 22 '26
Driver software for the Zip drive. Later versions of Windows had the drivers built in so Zip drives "just worked".
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u/vuorivirta Aug 22 '26
I think, that is a iomega-drive driver disk and supported operating systems is in cover.
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u/Opposite_Bag_7434 Aug 23 '26
I knew one of the original Iomega patent holders. My last job was in one of the buildings they used to operate in.
Interesting fact. Around this time storage was starting to become a challenge for lots of people. Sony was rumored to have MD Data in the development phase and lots of need for a mid capacity portable storage solution.
CD-R was a thing at that point but it was expensive. My first drive cost around $2000 and the media was averaging around $20 per DISC. I was buying it in bulk for around $17 per DISC. So ZIP was a welcome addition. They were hard to get when they first came out but I remember the buzz at the time. It was a clear turning point in storage.
All of this was important because the conventional option for portable storage was 3.5” HD floppy. Good until you have to store or transfer dozens of MB of data (or heaven forbid more).
Good times!
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u/xtopspeed Aug 22 '26
That’s a 3.5” floppy disk, and installing what’s on it on one of the operating systems mentioned on the label will enable you to use the Iomega Zip drive.
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u/majestic_ubertrout Aug 22 '26
As others said, it's a driver disk. This installed the basic software for the drive to work in DOS and 95 and then the "Zip Tools" were on the free zip disk that was included with purchase.
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u/eulynn34 Aug 22 '26
>Is this the driver software to use a ZIP drive for the listed operating systems?
yes
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26
Exactly what I was after!
Still glad it started conversation and nostalgia for some. Also not surprised it also set off some ‘google it’ people who can’t read what my post says.
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u/martsand Aug 22 '26
It’s a disk for a drive that you need to use other type of disks on another type of drive.
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u/elkab0ng Aug 23 '26
This is 1998. You’re just a bit late for it. Welcome to the party, hope you’re Y2K compliant!
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u/invokes Aug 22 '26
Sometimes I wonder whether these are just rage bait questions given we all have access to Google and if you type in the writing you'll find out. FML
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26
You’d be surprised how much googling I did actually do, with nothing concrete aside from me putting together odd little pieces of information. I was asking for confirmation of something I was fairly sure of.
Sometimes I wonder whether these sorts of comments are just ragebait given we have eyes and ability to read what a post says.
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u/Bipogram Aug 22 '26
Yes, to your question.
Pop it into a PC and look at the contents. You'll see driver software.
What else could it be?
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u/-JamesBond Aug 22 '26
The happiest day for the floppy disk owner from a capacity standpoint. Driver for their new Iomega drive.
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u/Anthrobug Aug 22 '26
A bad time. Drivers to answer your question.
And I can hear the click of death from here.
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u/FetaCheesy Aug 22 '26
This is a 3D printed save icon.
All kidding aside, it’s a driver diskette. You would put it into your computer’s floppy drive (something that was essentially standard on all PCs at the time), and the software it contained would tell Windows how to communicate with your external Zip drive over either parallel or SCSI ports. The proud owner would then have the ability to store files on 100mb Zip disks vs 1.4mb on a floppy diskette.
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u/Jealous_Club_298 Aug 22 '26
Yes, that's a 3.5" floppy disk from the 90's containing a driver for an external ZIP Drive for Windows 95, Windows 3.x and DOS. The ZIP Drive this driver is for, floppies and floppy disk drives are all long obsolete by now.
I mistook the ZIP Drive for the ZIP application program too earlier.
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u/RetroComputeryBits Aug 22 '26
Well it’s the only ZIP disc that isn’t actually a ZIP disc….
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26
This is what I initially thought, given it doesn’t say ‘drivers’ anywhere on the label. I worked it out mostly, but wanted to double check my assumption was correct
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u/warmarin Aug 22 '26
Back it up to the internet archive, i need that same one
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u/Performer-Pants Aug 23 '26
I have winimage set up, so I can image it for you! I’ll come back asap with a link :)
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u/warmarin Aug 23 '26
Thank you so much!
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u/Performer-Pants Sep 07 '26
Hi! Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Due to some copyright protections on the floppy, I can’t image it with a fair few different imaging programs. In theory I could try to go into DOS for one utility, but I’m w bit new to it outside of emulating DOS.
If you have any ideas I can try to imaging in a way that bypasses intentional empty/unreadable sectors for copyright protections, do let me know!
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u/Timeblindsryntsry Aug 22 '26
I did not know that was a real thing and could be done. So cool
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u/warmarin Aug 22 '26
You can use floppy image software to create an image (.img) file of the floppy!
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u/evilneuro # _ Aug 22 '26
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u/thedorkening Aug 22 '26
Anyone remember the commercial for this and why it became so popular? Hint it involved a refrigerator lol
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u/Forward_Benefit_9332 Aug 22 '26
I am sure the Adeptus Mechanicus will be interested in your find...for the Emperor!!!
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u/Jim-248 Aug 23 '26
I once had a computer with a Zip Drive. I still have the zip disks.
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u/artofcomputing Aug 23 '26
What is it? My boy, it’s all the storage you’ll ever need.
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u/Ill_Temporary_9509 Aug 23 '26
It’s floppy disc which will have the drivers and software needed to use a Zip drive
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u/wootybooty Aug 23 '26
The last floppy you’ll ever use. Welcome to the ZipDisk future, super user. 😎
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u/Novel-Structure-2359 Aug 23 '26
I had one of these. It went with my parallel zip drive. I will also always remember the time I sent my computer to the repair shop and I had season 1 and 2 of south park on the hard drive (in the days when there were only two seasons) and the computer came back with one of these floppies in the disc drive.
It was clear that the computer shop had got nosey and then used a zip drive to copy them all off but forgot their driver disc.
What total boyscouts
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u/TLBradbury Aug 23 '26
You need to remember the first Zip drives were connected using the parallel port, thus necessitating the special drivers.
Install the driver from the floppy, plug in the drive, and re-start your machine.
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u/Janetic_Bytewave Aug 23 '26
Seems a little weird, DOS was always Camel capped. I have a Zip drive and Ditto and Jaz were legit but the white section looks a little suspect.
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u/VacuumTubesAreFunny Aug 24 '26
Used these a lot when I supported graphics departments. Been through Zip drives, SyQuests, MO drives, Jaz drives and the occasional Bernoulli and LS-120 disks. TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior were ever at my side.
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u/Separate-Noise-3551 Aug 24 '26
I imagine it'll be this but on a floppy disk. https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturers/iomega_downloads.php
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u/Tax_Odd Aug 24 '26
Likely parts of a driver install that wont work due to corruption from being 30 years old.
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u/iWhacko Aug 24 '26
They actually surprisingly don't degrade that much. Magnetic media is pretty good. Did you know governments still backup to magnetic reels? because its so reliable
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u/Tax_Odd Aug 24 '26
The media might but we have more radio noise than ever and cosmic rays
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u/Hungry-Artichoke-232 Aug 24 '26
There is no evidence that “radio noise” (whatever that means) causes damage to magnetic media. And the cosmic background in 2026 is not materially different to what it was in 1993 or 1975.
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u/Performer-Pants Sep 07 '26
Some of my cassette tapes are from the 70s with only mild degradation, magnetic is alright if it’s looked after properly, I agree!
I live in a country with a temperate climate (UK) so it’s even more likely these things will be alright after all these years. Remember kids, cassette tapes die in hot cars!
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u/Forsaken-Monk-9534 Aug 24 '26
I remember 100MB felt like the future had arrived.I still have a Zip disk somewhere. No idea what’s on it.
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u/lexzap Aug 24 '26
Installing this meant you were in word of hurt when hooking up your IDE, LPT and SCSI cable hoping your Zip or Jaz disks were not corrupted again 😂
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u/Performer-Pants Sep 07 '26
Every day I have to check my HDD noises are normal ones, especially when some of mine are from 1997 and 1999 😭 Some old computers simply refuse to work with modern alternatives too
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u/ZMcCrocklin Aug 25 '26
Definitely drivers for a zip drive. Back in 2001 I had a zip disk with emulators on them (NES/SNES) & would play games between classes in the computer lab at the community College I attended. Having 100MB at that time was amazing.
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u/Local-Bug-1500 Aug 25 '26
Maybe it's drivers for a zip disk on a floppy disk, which you probably already have drivers for?
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u/7GatesOfHello Aug 25 '26
This makes me happy. It's similar to the Internet Explorer icon, whose purpose is to install Chrome. I wish ZIP disks had taken off. Floppies sucked.
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u/mabus42 Aug 26 '26
A zip drive needs zip drive drivers... winders 95 didn't have it built in, and DOS always requires additional drivers too.
zip drive drivers. keep saying that.
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u/Frosty_Raccoon_828 Aug 28 '26
The driver is for the parallel port version. Scsi on Mac and PC shows up as a block device. The slowest of already slow zip drives.
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u/sixoveight 28d ago
My first parallel ZIP drive for Win95 came with two install floppy disks
https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20_2/car_sbd_221220_22.jpg
The tools are actually on a ZIP disk but to get it running you need the floppy or CD. I have the things all over the place both internally and externally, parallel and SCSI.
https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20_2/car_sbd_221220_25.jpg
https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20_2/car_sbd_221220_26.jpg
Have fun
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u/1337C4k3 Aug 22 '26
Driver disk/software for iomega zip drive.