Jerome Fine replies: Not sure if this helps, but Iomega produced a SCSI "insider" (if that is the correct name used for marketing) which was a drive with a removable cartridge of 196608 blocks. The drives were the size of a 3 1/2" disk drive and the media were just a bit bigger than a 3 1/2" floppy and about twice as thick. The drives were fully SCSI compatible as far as my experience is worth. I first purchased a drive around 1997 and the date on the files supplied with the drives is April 10, 1997. The primary reason I used the drives was to replace an RX50 on a PDP-11/73 when the RD53 drive was replaced with a 100 MByte SCSI drive using a CQD 200/TM. It was very strange having a removable cartridge that had a larger capacity than the RD53 with the physical size of an RX23. The problem of backing up all the files had more capacity than the RD53. The drives initially served as the exchange media between the PDP-11/73 and the PC running Windows 95 on a Pentium 166 - later upgraded to a Pentium III running W98SE. Shortly after that, the Sony SMO S-501 (also with a SCSI interface) became much lower in cost, was much more reliable and had a 295 MByte cartridge (actually 590 with 295 MBytes available on each side with only one side available at a time - the Sony drives were NOT double sided). Zane Healy can comment on the problems with some models - probably later versions since when I used the Iomega drives, I never had a problem. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

Jerome Fine replies: Although both the drive and media have the word "Zip" on them, I didn't notice until you helped me to remember that they are indeed called Zip drives. I feel I was fortunate to have the internal SCSI version. For the PC, there is a full set of software tools available. For the PDP-11, they are just nice ordinary drives with removable media - although the software WRITE PROTECT feature requires the PC software tools to toggle the status of the media. Which is why I stopped relying on the Zip drive when I heard about the "feature". By that time, I had graduated to the Sony SMO S-501, so it was not a problem. These days, the disk drives can hold everything I want to save online - including a year of backup files. After that, I make a copy to a DVD. In a year or two, after I upgrade to a new system, I guess I will break down and get a blueray. Everything I have should fit on a single media. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

On Wednesday 27 February 2008 20:17, Chuck Guzis wrote: I've got one of those, probably the 100MB variety, in an external SCSI configuration. I have no idea if it works or not as I don't have any media to test it with, and what I've seen for sale is usually in multiples with a price that's a bit more than I want to deal with for something I'm not sure I can use. Anybody know if I took this out of the external case could it be used as an internal drive? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On 27 Feb 2008 at 22:30, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: Back when the Jaz was new stuff, we were involved with making recommendations for several hundred customers for the best removable mass storage medium for quick portable backups. Many of our customers used tape (8mm/DLT mostly; 4mm DAT and Travan was just too unreliable), but some wanted faster random-access storage. Many of our customers had used 150MB and 230MB Bernoulli drives with much success, so when the Jaz drive came out, they expected the same quality, particularly given the high media price. Sadly, most were disappointed--many drives seemed to fail within a few months. This may have been an issue of QC at the manufacturing site, but it was enough to make most of our customers swear off them. The other thing that surprised many was that Iomega spec-ed the shelf life of the media at 10 years. This is not good news. To be fair, similar experiences were had with the Castlewood Orb drives and the Syquest SyJet. Both of those companies are defunct, but Iomega plugs on. I believe their current offering is the 35/70GB Rev drive. I have no experiece with these models. As usual, YMMV. Cheers, Chuck

The external 100M ZIP drive was available in three versions: SCSI Parallel port "ZIP PLUS": both parallel AND SCSI, with "auto detect" I just ran across a used ZIP-PLUS, with power supply and DB25 cable. I have no idea whether it works. For $20, I'll stuff it into Priority mail. (or $10 if you wanna pick it up in Berkeley) Some where in this room are at least one SCSI and three or four parallel port ZIPs (a lot cheaper), an "Orb" drive (in box), etc. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote: I have RT-11 on a 100MB ZIP disk, and RSX11 on another. My 11/53 (nee DS550) with RQZX1 likes the ZIP drive just fine. Doc

On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 13:10 +0100, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote: Ensoniq EPS with version 2.00 firmware. Go on, ask me how I know. This shortcoming is fixed in the 2.40 firmware. Gordon

I must have been the only person on earth who had no dud cartridges or click of death, and I used ZIP drives a lot for sneakernetting. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Only death cures stupidity! -- "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" -------------------

I'll buy that. For me, as it sounds like for you, the ZIP was just a big floppy, with all the attendant disadvantages. But transfer was much nicer when I didn't have a big pipe between point A and point B (like, for example, the printer). I wouldn't use a floppy for backup either. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- I used to not finish sentences, but now I ----------------------------------

On 28 Feb 2008 at 9:08, Jules Richardson wrote: There was a lot of junk in the way of tape drives out at the time. We wouldn't endorse any kind of tape that (a) didn't use a standard SCSI interface and command set (b) didn't perform read-after-write verification. 4mm DAT barely qualified, but we cautioned against it as being not-quite-ready-for-serious-use. The only Travan drive that even came close was an HP model that claimed to do read-after-write. Our customers used this stuff out in the field almost exclusively, so it also had to survive environmental stress. To their credit, I've a number of Zip drives and at least 2 Jaz drives as well as a couple of Bernoullis and they all seem to work fine. But recommending something for rugged use is a different matter entirely. Most customers eventually went to purchasing hard drives to hold backup data. Cheers, Chuck

On 28 Feb 2008 at 12:01, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: We were approached by Datasonix to endorse their Pereos drive. Apparently, one of their marketing people, in his eagerness to clinch a sale, had told a customer that we'd already approved it and sold them 150 of the things. After I went over the specs with their technical guy and told him that there was no way were were going to endorse a 2mm helical-scan drive without write verification and a driver that required more than 100K of memory, I got a pep talk from the CEO. He insisted on sending me a couple of the drives with full access to their engineering staff. I got one good backup out of the thing after many tries. After a week of wasting my time, I boxed the things up and sent them back. I think I still have the software, if anyone's looking for it. They're probably collector's items now--and likely in the "vintage" category. Tiny little tape drive that ran on AA batteries with postage-stamp-sized carts claiming to hold 1GB each. Cheers, Chuck

On Thursday 28 February 2008 10:08, Jules Richardson wrote: The two that I have are Colorado (actually H-P) and Conner. I never had much of a problem with them, and got to the point where it took 8 or 9 tapes to do a full backup, which I'd do about every six months or so, back when. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin