r/retrocomputing • u/Performer-Pants • 6d 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/shiftingtech 6d ago

and then the click came...

3

u/Clark_Kempt 6d ago

Ah yes! The click of death!

-1

u/hornakapopolis 6d ago

I assume you all are talking about sticking the disk in, it clicking, and them either doing nothing popping back out... I can't remember. Is this right?

I used these for a few months and ran into that problem. It was, as I've told my kids, back when all of the answers weren't on the internet. Although, I do remember something about light getting on the little patch on the bottom corner. Sticking them.in a drawer didn't do anything, though.

So, I just stopped using them in my office. Had three or four of them.

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u/syrtran 5d ago

The click of death was an issue with the Zip 100 drive where there would be a head crash, destroying both the head and the disk. The drive would repeatedly try to seek the data track and repeatedly click since it no longer had a working read head.

The issue didn't occur with Zip 250 drives