For a variety of reasons I think. The disks were fairly expensive, somewhat bulky and they couldn't keep up with the storage capacity of CD-Rs and USB thumb drives, even though there was a 250 MB version of the ZIP disk. I also seem to remember Iomega made some questionable business decisions with another, physically smaller disk format intended for digital cameras. For me, the appearance of USB thumb drives is what I consider my "personal 640 KB moment". When people around me first started using them in 2002 or so me and my mates were like: "What the heck is that and why would anyone use it? It's not like you'd simply take it and give it to someone with the files you want to share, or post it to someone! Someone will invent a removable disk that stores multiple gigabytes at the cost of a 1.44 MB floppy disk soon and those USB drives will be forgotten!". Well, you all know how that went. Perhaps today SD cards are the closest to what floppies used to be but even small ones are still more expensive. I mean how much was a budget floppy near the end of the era? 1 Euro in today's money maybe, or even less than that? I vaguely seem to remember a ten-pack for a fiver but adjusted for inflation 1 Euro probably isn't too far off.
I loved my time with a Zip. Mine was in my new Gateway Computer. I got one put in. Because they said that one was available. I also got my hard drive upgraded from 2.5 gb. To 6 gb. The largest one around at the time. Good Old Days. 😊😊😊😊
First time we got a 4GB drive in the office, I remember we all crowded around to look at it. "Max Storage!!!" And these were full-on heavy half-height drives, not the thin single platter things we see nowadays!
@@TimsRetroCorner Thank you... as a side note the driver only works with the ZIP 100 drives and not the 250 in case you get asked, I'm working on finding out why and hopefully updating the driver :) might be a while though...
I may know whats on the disk with the Wav files! They were edited or even made with something called Wavelab. Quite likely this particular disk was used with an SCSI zip drive on an Akai rackmounted sampler. Maybe anything from an S1100 or even an S3000XL. I have a bunch of these samplers. I am getting things together to hook up an scsi zip drive to one of the samplers in my collection.
Nice you've got it Up and running, but especially for the A1200 I don' t quiet see the need for a ZIP. You can use CF Card Adapters for the pcmcia which hold much more capacity....
Except a PCMCIA card will rob you of 4MB RAM... And is only usable on an A1200 or A600. The parallel Zip drive will work on anything from an A500 up. And if you have a Zip drive, why not use it?
Worth noting is that if you want to use ppazip with Workbench 1.x you need the older ppazip 0.7, not 0.8 that is on aminet. That isn't really explained in the readme.
I still have the external parallel model I bought back in 1997. It was excruciatingly slow even then. The internal IDE one was an improvement, but still not great.
Faster than floppies but definitely not suitable for transferring files up to the 100 MB you could fit onto a disk. And if the drives failed ("click of death") they'd wipe your disks. My dad's first external SCSI ZIP drive ate one, luckily we recognised the symptoms and didn't try to feed it any more.
Some of them have both parallel and SCSI. They called them Iomega Zip100 Plus ... Whatever you do, never have the Amiga or the device powered on when unplugging or plugging in something in the serial/parallel port of the Amiga. It will blow the 8520 chip. I used a SCSI ZipDrive for my Amiga back in the days. Much faster than the parallel version. If i remember correctly, no drivers was needed. You need to use a file manager like "Diskmaster" or similar.
I use a 100MB zip drive for moving files between my PC (I also use another USB zip drive with an old laptop) and my Archimedes 3010 computer, it works perfect. 😊 Btw. USB zip drives dont work on PC's with Windows 10/11 at least that's from my experience, so I have Windows XP on my old laptop and here it works.
Not sure how much ZIP drive is suited for A1200 as you can easily transfer files with CF card via pcmicia. On other hand ZIP drive is awesome addition for A500 with classic external HDD running original WB 1.3.
If you want to run the machine with the drive attached, PCMCIA will lose you 4MB on an expanded system. whereas the Zip drive just takes up the parallel port. Now if you want to print at the same time, then maybe it's a different story. I think it's important to have options available. :)
actualy Iomega made a scsi drive called a floptical before the zip (i've had a coupel) that was a 21 mb floppy drive but it could altso read HD nd SD floppies
@@TimsRetroCorner I had a few of these drives back in the day one had an issue but the other 4 were OK. I also believe a bad disk can damage a good drive too. I also had a floptical drive too, remember those?
@@TimsRetroCorner My dad's first one developed the CoD after a few years, the one he bought to replace it outlived the ZIP era. The ugly thing is the drive destroys the data on the disk when it fails with the CoD.
zip 100mb or 250mb? there are also Icons to change the standard icon from FLOPPY to ZIP/ICON but I never understood where to place it and then there are 2 types
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I really like the zip drive. Feels like a future that never was. It was too short lived.
For a variety of reasons I think. The disks were fairly expensive, somewhat bulky and they couldn't keep up with the storage capacity of CD-Rs and USB thumb drives, even though there was a 250 MB version of the ZIP disk. I also seem to remember Iomega made some questionable business decisions with another, physically smaller disk format intended for digital cameras.
For me, the appearance of USB thumb drives is what I consider my "personal 640 KB moment". When people around me first started using them in 2002 or so me and my mates were like: "What the heck is that and why would anyone use it? It's not like you'd simply take it and give it to someone with the files you want to share, or post it to someone! Someone will invent a removable disk that stores multiple gigabytes at the cost of a 1.44 MB floppy disk soon and those USB drives will be forgotten!". Well, you all know how that went. Perhaps today SD cards are the closest to what floppies used to be but even small ones are still more expensive. I mean how much was a budget floppy near the end of the era? 1 Euro in today's money maybe, or even less than that? I vaguely seem to remember a ten-pack for a fiver but adjusted for inflation 1 Euro probably isn't too far off.
Ok this is great timing! I found a stash of my old zip disks a while ago. Then I decided a few days ago to buy in some zip drives, ide and scsi.
Smashed it with the music, I still have one of these drives I think ...... Nice retro use of a zip
I loved my time with a Zip.
Mine was in my new Gateway Computer.
I got one put in. Because they said that one was available.
I also got my hard drive upgraded from 2.5 gb. To 6 gb. The largest one around at the time.
Good Old Days. 😊😊😊😊
First time we got a 4GB drive in the office, I remember we all crowded around to look at it. "Max Storage!!!" And these were full-on heavy half-height drives, not the thin single platter things we see nowadays!
Very cool Tim :) I just love it, Making two devices (never meant to use together), working :) awesome! Cheers
Maybe I should try and hook it up to an IEC bus....
Thanks for linking to my PCBWay Shared Project, there is a whole video too on my TH-cam Channel, would appreciate a link if your feeling generous :)
Added to the description :)
@@TimsRetroCorner Thank you... as a side note the driver only works with the ZIP 100 drives and not the 250 in case you get asked, I'm working on finding out why and hopefully updating the driver :) might be a while though...
I had (still do) 2 Zip Drives --- One for my PC and one for my Amiga.
Also had (have) LS-120 Disk/Drives.
I may know whats on the disk with the Wav files! They were edited or even made with something called Wavelab. Quite likely this particular disk was used with an SCSI zip drive on an Akai rackmounted sampler. Maybe anything from an S1100 or even an S3000XL. I have a bunch of these samplers. I am getting things together to hook up an scsi zip drive to one of the samplers in my collection.
I had a LS120 drive, I didn't fancy the zip drive, but then I preferred DCC over Minidisc. 😊😊
Nice you've got it Up and running, but especially for the A1200 I don' t quiet see the need for a ZIP. You can use CF Card Adapters for the pcmcia which hold much more capacity....
Except a PCMCIA card will rob you of 4MB RAM... And is only usable on an A1200 or A600. The parallel Zip drive will work on anything from an A500 up. And if you have a Zip drive, why not use it?
Worth noting is that if you want to use ppazip with Workbench 1.x you need the older ppazip 0.7, not 0.8 that is on aminet. That isn't really explained in the readme.
I still have the external parallel model I bought back in 1997. It was excruciatingly slow even then. The internal IDE one was an improvement, but still not great.
Faster than floppies but definitely not suitable for transferring files up to the 100 MB you could fit onto a disk. And if the drives failed ("click of death") they'd wipe your disks. My dad's first external SCSI ZIP drive ate one, luckily we recognised the symptoms and didn't try to feed it any more.
Some of them have both parallel and SCSI. They called them Iomega Zip100 Plus ...
Whatever you do, never have the Amiga or the device powered on when unplugging or plugging in something in the serial/parallel port of the Amiga. It will blow the 8520 chip.
I used a SCSI ZipDrive for my Amiga back in the days. Much faster than the parallel version. If i remember correctly, no drivers was needed.
You need to use a file manager like "Diskmaster" or similar.
Good tip. Especially in the A1200 & A600, where the CIAs are soldered on.
I use a 100MB zip drive for moving files between my PC (I also use another USB zip drive with an old laptop) and my Archimedes 3010 computer, it works perfect. 😊 Btw. USB zip drives dont work on PC's with Windows 10/11 at least that's from my experience, so I have Windows XP on my old laptop and here it works.
I'd heard that too. But the USB Zip works fine on my Windows 11 laptop. I guess it gets treated as a generic USB storage device?
Have an IDE one in my towerised Amiga 1200 with Zorro slots
Not sure how much ZIP drive is suited for A1200 as you can easily transfer files with CF card via pcmicia. On other hand ZIP drive is awesome addition for A500 with classic external HDD running original WB 1.3.
If you want to run the machine with the drive attached, PCMCIA will lose you 4MB on an expanded system. whereas the Zip drive just takes up the parallel port. Now if you want to print at the same time, then maybe it's a different story. I think it's important to have options available. :)
actualy Iomega made a scsi drive called a floptical before the zip (i've had a coupel) that was a 21 mb floppy drive but it could altso read HD nd SD floppies
No "click of death" yet then ;-)
Nope. Never had it back in the day either. Maybe I was just lucky...
@@TimsRetroCorner I had a few of these drives back in the day one had an issue but the other 4 were OK. I also believe a bad disk can damage a good drive too. I also had a floptical drive too, remember those?
@@TimsRetroCorner My dad's first one developed the CoD after a few years, the one he bought to replace it outlived the ZIP era. The ugly thing is the drive destroys the data on the disk when it fails with the CoD.
zip 100mb or 250mb?
there are also Icons to change the standard icon from FLOPPY to ZIP/ICON but I never understood where to place it and then there are 2 types
100mb. I do have a 250mb drive, but it's SCSI, and I lack anything with the appropriate port at the moment.