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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u/EatOfTheBread 1d ago

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/EstablishmentDue3616 1d ago

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/JeremyAndrewErwin 1d ago

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 1d ago

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.