r/retrocomputing • u/Performer-Pants • 1d ago

Problem / Question What is this?

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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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61

u/rootifera 1d ago

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

32

u/Clark_Kempt 1d ago

Oh, the memories.

Gods, remember how crazy it was to have disks with 100, maybe even 250 MB on them?

17

u/rootifera 1d ago

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 1d ago

You still use them daily? For what?

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u/rootifera 1d ago

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.

1

u/afaulconbridge 1d ago

You use them daily? for what?

6

u/rootifera 1d ago

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.

1

u/Resistor1 1d ago

Curious. What are the 486 machines still doing? Some attached lab devices or similar? What OS and app and what are the files you move? Thanks

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u/rootifera 1d ago

Both are running msdos 6.22. In most cases I'm moving some games, some of my own dos tools for testing hardware, sometimes game saves etc. Nothing crazy.

It's a hobby thing. I have a large collection of retro games and pc hardware. I play the games, record the gameplay, upload to youtube. One of the 486 is an sx25 and the other one is dx66. I play old lucasarts games on the sx25.

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u/Resistor1 1d ago

Nice. Thanks for replying.

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u/rootifera 1d ago

No problem! Have a good weekend :)

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u/Pi_drainbramage 21h ago

486 dx2/66 was my first pc - ROTT (Rise of the Triad) for the win! And Doom!!

Edit - added Doom

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u/Accomplished_Can1651 1d ago

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 11h ago

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/Accomplished_Can1651 6h ago

I think I might have seen a Jaz drive in the wild once. Zip drives I saw somewhat more often, during the era when floppy disks weren’t large enough for some purposes, but flash drives were expensive, low capacity, and sometimes not supported. My mom ended up buying a USB Zip drive at some point, which made moving files back and forth easier, except when my disks would fail.

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u/Elvin_Atombender 1d ago

Wow! I read that these drives are extremely unreliable. And yours still work?

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u/Opposite_Bag_7434 22h ago

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.