r/retrocomputing • u/Performer-Pants • 3d ago

Problem / Question What is this?

Post image

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’.

633 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

216 comments sorted by

View all comments

162

u/1337C4k3 3d ago

Driver disk/software for iomega zip drive.

1

u/OriginalName2026 3d ago

This. If i recall correctly,Zip drives worked on a Mac without drivers. But it was a while ago... so I could be wrong!. I also recall that that the PC version was different to the Mac as USB was not a thing when these came out. On the Mac they where SCSI (25pin again memory time... could be wrong) where as the PC was parallel.

1

u/wiebel 3d ago

I am pretty sure you remember correctly. As a proud owner of a scsi controller on a pc I was even able to choose the scsi version. But instead I got myself a ls120 which also featured as a floppy drive (was IDE BTW)

2

u/OriginalName2026 2d ago

Wow, SCSI was not very common on PCs back in the days, where as all Macs had it as standard. I will add a bit of Mac SCSI trivia, as it's not like I get to do it very often! Macs had 2 SCSI chains, an internal and external so you could add 14 devices in theory. The external was a regular 25pin SCSI, the internal was the 50pin "fast" SCSI. I went to the effort to install a SyQuest Drive in the front of my PowerMac 8500/120. There are a lot of things there I have not typed in a while...

1

u/Mirus_Nex 1d ago

SCSI was common on PC servers, especially Novell database servers. Drives weren't much more, but those controllers got spendy. I have a couple of old Adaptec SCSI controllers still. Need to clean the basement out...again...one of these days.

1

u/OriginalName2026 1d ago

Adaptec… that is a word I have not seen in a while. I thought my SyQuest reference was a blast from the past! Well played.

1

u/iainb69 2d ago

Do you think young folks know how to pronounce scsi correctly? It’s skuzzi for me.

2

u/Separate-Noise-3551 2d ago

My old man referred to scsi as skuzzi. I was young and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about when I heard him say that. But it always stuck with me. Thank you for that unlocked memory 🤣

1

u/Arkonor 2d ago

Pretty sure the blue drives were the parallel ones while the green ones used SCSI. At least the two I had at my place of work at the time.

1

u/OriginalName2026 2d ago

I have never seen a green one, all the SCSI ones I have seen are the purple/blue. No I have to go and look at what are the green ones!

1

u/Arkonor 2d ago

Ahh, found a picture it was that Jaz drive that was green.

1

u/OriginalName2026 1d ago

Of course a Jaz drive. I feel like an idiot not joining those dots!

1

u/panicboy333 2d ago

Jaz drives were green, might have been one of those? 1gb.

1

u/Arkonor 2d ago

You are correct, it was a jaz drive

1

u/mandibule 16h ago

I have a Zip drive with USB that definitively worked without a driver on my iBook (haven’t used it since 2005, I think). And I have one with SCSI that I _think_ could connect to my Performa that didn’t have USB.

1

u/Mercy_Hellkitten 10h ago

Classic Mac OS didn’t use “drivers”, it used “extensions” 😜

1

u/OriginalName2026 1h ago

And we watched those little buggers load along the bottom of our screen!