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Date:	Sun, 5 Sep 2004 11:47:25 PDT7
From:	"J. R. Fox" <jr_fox@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	Ray Davison <raydav@charter.net > , scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Re: Zip drives

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Ray Davison wrote:

> I just saw a Zip post of yours from June. What is your current
> situation with Zip drives. I have a Zip 100 that I hev been using for
> several years.

> Did you ever get yours to work?

Hi Ray,

O.K., here's the general status on that. I've had a Zip 100 Parallel
connected to my tower desktop (an older system) for several years, where
it continues to provide good service with all operating systems. The 100
mb. "super-floppies" are increasingly less relevant, because of the slow
speed and modest capacity, but still useful enough (for some things) that
I don't want to dispense with them as an option. I am still using the old
Iomega "OAD" drivers for Warp 4, and for eCS 1.0 on that machine. The
DDPak stated that OAD could no longer be used for eCS (even ver. 1.0), but
this is *incorrect.* It works just fine.

I also have a Zip-250 Parallel that I picked up cheap on Ebay, which is
usually connected to the Shuttle XPC portable. It works fine for Win,
though of course it is still quite slow. Using the Zip-250 PP driver from
DDPak, I have never been able to get any response from the Zip drive, no
matter how I've futzed around with Config.Sys options. The caveats in the
ReadMe file did not seem to make any difference. (You cannot use OAD for
this drive, so there was no point messing with that.) So, I'm kinda stuck
as far as being able to use this drive with the eCS 1.1 partitions on the
Shuttle.

I skipped the Zip-750 model entirely. Poor results to cost ratio, vs.
recordable CD, which offers the same capacity. Zip is a quaint technology
that has been on its way out for some time now. I continue to use it for
certain reasons (it will record files as not Read Only, and it will take
the EAs, unlike a CD; it remains useful for smaller and temporary jobs,
which you'd have to risk multi-session or use packet-writing for on CD),
but largely because I already have the drives and the media.

Jerry has told me to forget about Zip, because it has no future, and
because of reliability problems. He also says the printer pass-through
will have serious problems with eCS, even if I managed to resolve my
driver problem. This will sound kind of odd, but I've had bad CDs and cd
failures, though never a problem with Zip, apart from trashing the
contents of a couple Zip cartridges, due entirely to really dumb User
Error.

> OK, I just read it correctly; parallel port. The one I am running is
> IDE. I have a Zip 100 parallel port that I have never tried to use.
> First reason is I don't have a 5V supply for it.

That's easily correctable. Ebay. Or, for example, I saw the Iomega
"Universal Portable Power Supply" (the better one, that once sold for $40.
new) yesterday on some dealer table at the Pomona show. He wanted 5 bucks
for it. You don't make it out to Pomona ? No problem, I could easily
pick one up for you, the next time I see it. The 100 mb. media might be
more of a problem. Costco used to carry them, though probably not
anymore.

[I'm going to copy this to the Help List, in case anyone else may find it
of interest.]

Jordan

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