13 Feb
2002
13 Feb
'02
1:57 p.m.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
I had the same problem with a ZIP 100 Plus (SCSI
interface rather
than parallel) drive I bought brand new. It either came like that or was
damaged when I first used it. I never actually used it until after having
owned it for more than a year, so I couldn't get it repaired under
warranty. I managed to super-glue the head back onto the armature but it
still didn't work. So at some point I picked up a regular ZIP 100
(parallel interface) for free or at least very cheap (can't remember) and
hoped it worked, with the intent of swapping the inner mechanism in the
SCSI version. Well, I managed to do this the other night and now I have a
working SCSI ZIP 100 drive so I am happy.
Jerome Fine replies:
Bravo - I am not a hardware person unless I am desperate.
Tonight I found an internal ZIP 100 with an IDE
interface so I'll just use
that in my conversion box instead of the external.
My SCSI Zip 100 drive has always been an internal. In fact, I installed
one as the removable media drive on a PDP-11/73 about 4 years ago
when the switch was made from an RD53 to a SCSI hard drive. While
the Zip 100 was never that popular a drive, the shift to a media with
more capacity than the former RD53 was a bit amazing. It allowed
all of the files from the RD53 to be restored from ONE Zip cartridge
rather than multiple RX50 floppies. As such, I try to keep one
Zip 100 available to interface with the PDp-11.
Now, where might I find an IDE Zip 100 internal drive?