Zip & Jaz Retro Storage

Zip drive and Jaz drive removable storage from Iomega was popular in the mid-to-late 1990s and early noughties. In this video I look back at Zip and Jaz disks and internal and external drives, and in the process boot up Windows 98!
If you enjoy this video, you may also like some of my other retro computing content, including:
ZX81 Classic PC: • ZX81 Classic PC
Early PCs at the National Museum of Computing: • Early PCs at the Natio...
PC Motherboard Evolution: • PC Motherboard Evolution
ExplainingComputers merchandise can be purchased via Teespring:
teespring.com/stores/explaini...
More videos on computing and related topics can be found at: / explainingcomputers
You may also like my ExplainingTheFuture channel at: / explainingthefuture
#ZipDrive #JazDrive #RetroStorage #ExplainingComputers

[@geoffbarton5917]

I was an engineer on the original Zip, especially the internal and Jaz was my project. Thanks for the nostalgia.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Wonderful! Great to meet you hear. :)

[@skakdosmer]

Uh ... "Great to meet you here", maybe?

[@ExplainingComputers]

I think so! :)

[@randomlifts]

I used this for my Amiga :) SCSI interface if I remember correctly

[@trollenz]

Good old times... All our graphic works traveled to the offset printing on those ZIP drives. You made our life easier ! Sorry ! I meant ZIP DISK ;-)

[@jamesshore2987]

I enjoyed hearing about you previous encounters with Zips at university. There’s something I really like about old computing devices

[@premier69]

yeah, i know what you mean. i even had hair on my head back in those days

[@samuraiartguy]

Mother of Gods. Crusty Veteran of the Desktop Publishing wars here. That takes me back a bit. As a graphic designer and Art Director, we were overjoyed to have an “affordable” tech that was more cost effective that bulky, costly, and finicky SYQUEST drives and media. We FedExed those things all over the country, and part of a designers job in the 90s and early ‘naughts was pestering clients and vendors to get the costly beasites shipped BACK. But by the mid 2000’s, you could buy packs of Zips and even Jazz media in office supply stores. In my dusty drawers of tech are stacks of ZIP and some JAZZ cartridges. And even a few personal Syquest carts - not that I have a machine that will still read the blessed things. But there was a period where a coveted accessory was a rare iOmega SCSI to USB adapter cable. It was costly, dodgy, and finicky as hell, but it kind of worked, but USB 1.0 (original iMac era) was actually slower than SCSi, tho’ pure USB devices were more forgiving about connectivity. Fun dive in the wayback machine!

[@braselectron]

Thank you for preserving the history of computers, at a time that anything older than six months is considered obsolete.

[@Greg41982]

I grew up in North Ogden, Utah. Iomega headquarters was just a couple towns away. I remember using Zip drives in college and really tried to hang on to them longer than they were useful, if only to support the "hometown" company! Thanks for the memories!

[@TheNZJester]

I still have my old zip drives sitting in a box with my zip disks. I originally had the external SCSI model that I plugged onto my Amiga 1200 computer. It was actually connected via the Amiga 1200s internal 2.5" IDE harddrive socket. I had unplugged the internal 2.5" harddrive and installed a IDE to SCSI converter card with a IDE pass-through for the internal IDE drive. A ribbon cable then connected to a 25 pin SCSI plug mounted on the back of the computer in the Amiga 1200s back expansion slot. Before it could be accessed an Amiga device driver had to be loaded however although there more expensive Amiga 1200 cards with SCSI on that plugged into the internal expansion slot could allow you to boot the Amiga from the Zip Disk. I later used the SCSI Zip Dive on my first Widows PC that also had a SCSI CD Writer that had a 25pin external plug on its SCSI card. I also have a 3.5" bay internal mountable 250GB IDE Zip drive in my collection I purchased cheap after they fell out of favor that Plugged in externally via a IDE to USB interface to get access to my old files on a newer computer.

[@Bassotronics]

I’m one of those people who have never heard of JAZ before. Thank you again for another great and informative video.

[@boydpukalo8980]

I had a zip drive in 95 while in college at the University of Michigan, and shortly also got a Jaz drive. External SCSI drives. As i recall the engineering computers had SCSI interfaces so with the case could move the drive from dorm room to computer labs easily. I recently picked up usb Zip 100, firewire/usb Zip 250/750, and firewire/SATA REV drives this past year. Ordered 10 pack multi-color zip 100 & 250 disks with storage towers! Back to mid 90's. I really do like the sound of the Jaz 1GB insertion/spin-up/read-write operations. Very satisfying. I was able to find a brand new PCI-E U320 SCSI RAID controller with 2 internal and 2 external channels for modern systems luckily.

[@KowboyUSA]

What great memories these are. *P.S. _Both of my own Zip drives eventually suffered the "click of death" syndrome; nevertheless, while it lasted, it was exciting putting dozens of 1.44 mb floppies worth of data onto a single physically similar sized disk._

[@ChristianClark]

ha ha ha remember my old college days ...... ZIP and JAZZ used to be super huge, back then.

[@geoffbarton5917]

@@ChristianClark I was the lead firmware engineer for the Jazz. Good old days. Still have a bunch of Sip and Jazz drives and cartridges lying around.

[@paulluce2557]

I recently unearthed all my University work which I had stored on zip100 disks and both of my drives (one internal, the other external parallel. To my amazement both drives worked fine and all bar one of my disks still read error free.

[@Shawclough]

Thank you for all the videos you have posted this year. I find them both enjoyable and informative.

[@mrkitty777]

Enjoyed this one of EC very much too. 🤗😎

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

Those old PC noises bring back memories... My first PC (a 300Mhz Celeron, 32 MB RAM, a 3.2 GB HDD and an S3 GPU) actually came with Windows 98 pre-installed. Boy, that OS was easy to wreck ! I've never actually used a Zip drive myself back in the 90s, only good old floppies. I knew about the Zip drive's existence back then, but having one was nothing more than a dream to me.

[@NomadicSage]

This video took be back to the good old 90s I never used a zip drive but seeing an old computer with Windows 98 and floppy disk just makes me nostalgic. And yes that text at the end which tells you it's safe to turn off your computer, just classic. Thanks Chris for sharing this, you are the best.

[@elviraeloramilosic9813]

I've got a bit of blues watching jaz & *zip clonking* here. And humming and buzzing win 98 machine. I still have working win98 PC and a box of floppy disks and zip filled with my first programs and dos games. 😍 Beautiful. Informative. Funny. Thank you Chris! Great expectation from this channel, I said. Yes. EC never fails.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks Elvira. :)

[@makatron]

We need a game list for scientific purposes, of course.

[@MarkTheMorose]

I had a parallel port Zip drive. I'd had an IOmega tape backup drive in my early PC days (1995), so they were a trusted name to me when they launched the Zip. The drive and disks were fine, until the Click Of Death problem reared its head... That, combined with the greater capacity of early CD recorder drives put the nails in the coffin for the Zip. I did briefly dabble with the LS120 drive, as it was backwards compatible with regular floppy disks. Apparently, IOmega pondered using laser-servo (LS) technology before passing on it in favour of something else. The LS technology was then picked up by 3M. Thanks for the memories, and thanks for another year's videos. My regards to yourself, and Mr Scissors.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Mr Scissors says "Hi". :)

[@droses1600]

@@ExplainingComputers It's Mr Stanley I feel sorry for. He so very rarely gets a run out these days. Perhaps you could make a special holiday video where he gets to cut up some old pieces of cardboard....

[@xxxggthyf]

@@droses1600 I'd watch it! B-)

[@briandurward]

Did my PhD using a BBC Archimedes with Zip drives. Still have my disks but not sure how to read them.

[@billfusionenterprise]

I was wondering if anyone was going to mention ""click death"" which was a transferable failure. Also like the ls120 ref

[@billgross3579]

Ahhhh ... Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I have fond memories of using Zip disks.

[@58allendavis]

I have multiple internal and external Zip drives and nearly 100 of the 100MB disks from those days. Chris failed to mention that the drive mechanisms themselves were pretty junky and prone to failure. I learned early on to keep ALL my documentation and receipts because I had to several replaced because they died long before their warranties expired. I also still have a couple of the 1GB Jaz drives and perhaps 50 disks. These things were incredibly fast because, as pointed out in the video, they were essentially miniature removable hard disk drives. I worked as the Photo Editor for a daily newspaper, and the Jaz was a wonderful way to archive pictures and artwork. I bought my own devices and disks because I not only wanted to be able to work from home, but I also had a freelance photo/art business. With the advent of much higher capacity hard drives and lower prices, they simply outlived their practical usefulness. I've tried several times to sell all the Jaz stuff on eBay, even offering the whole lot for less than shipping would cost, but I suppose they'll reside in the bottom of my closet. Out of curiosity a couple of months ago, I hauled some of it out and hooked up to an old PowerMac 8600 and my PowerMac G4 MDD, and all the disks still worked and all the data was intact after 20+ years, so they had that going for them! Great video, Chris!

[@send2gl]

To think I used to make a coffee whilst the Spectrum was loading a chess game.

[@hubzcaps]

She the days of the C128D were the same Loadstar was the coolest floppy magazine back in the day

[@resrussia]

Thank you for another wonderful retrospective on computer technology from 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. I actually owned a Jaz disk and Zip disk(both a parallel and SCSI version - had both a Macintosh LC II and Windows based computer at the time). Also, once again your remembrances of using both these storage devices returns me to a happier time in my life teaching at the university and working on computers for there. As always, your weekly presentation on computers are well researched, thought out and presented. Thanks again for your quality work!

[@Milosz_Ostrow]

Thanks for the reminder, Chris. I have an external SCSI Zip drive and small supply of disks stashed in one of my closets that need to be pitched or sold to a collector on eBay. I acquired it in conjunction with a job some years ago, but due its reputation for unreliability, I never committed important files to it. High speed Internet and large-capacity USB flash drives soon made it superfluous for moving large files between computers.

[@tfilth5926]

I remember being 16 and my professor going over Zip media. Aaaaahh such nostalgia in this video, thank you!

[@_BlackSpectrum]

All these arrived before I was born ! Old but amazing.

[@ExplainingComputers]

You are now making many of us here feel old . . .

[@maicod]

including me :)

[@GVSolo]

@@ExplainingComputers LMAOL.

[@user-jp7tw3sd3x]

What I find really amazing is that this Zip disk is still readable after a couple of decades!

[@DFX2KX]

Say what you will about the hardware bugs that became infamous;The disks themselves where bulletproof. I was poor growing up, so I ended up using these things pretty far into the flashdrive era, purely because 100Mb for $10 was cheaper then 32 for $30

[@joeyscleaninglady2877]

@@DFX2KX drives were assembled in usa to a very high quality

[@DFX2KX]

@@joeyscleaninglady2877 when you got one that didn't get the click of death, yeah. Mine outlasted the PC it was in by a Longshot

[@sburton015]

I guess magnetic storage can last a long time, just like an old camcorder tape of me when I was in elementary school back in 1994 is still playable today and therefore I can see myself 24 years ago.

[@58allendavis]

@@sburton015 I have audio cassettes of the rock band I played in back in the early-mid 1970s, and they still sound fantastic after all these years. Granted, I used the highest quality cassettes I could find, which for me were the TDK metal bias tapes and the cases weren't glued, they were assembled with screws.

[@lv_woodturner3899]

Thanks for a blast from the past. I had a ZIP drive, but never a JAZ drive. I had some of the discs stop working, the dreaded clicking sound. If I recall many people also experienced ZIP discs which clicked and would not read. I did like the comparison of the 100MB ZIP disc to the micro SD card. Wow, what a difference in capacity. I still have some old technology including an original 10MB IBM Winchester hard drive, I just cannot throw this out. Heavy and slow. It used to shake the computer when it was operating. Dave.

[@EngineerOfChaos]

My dad had a Jaz Drive! Everyone DOES seem to forget about those. We also used Zip Drives a lot in my house too, but like Jaz Discs were like rare and we even rarely used them among my family.

[@wesleynaylor9853]

Yes! More historical videos please!

[@wesleynaylor9853]

Also it would be awesome if you could collaborate with Techmoan or LGR to share first hand experiences with outdated tech!

[@Videoneer]

+1 for techmoan and LGR!

[@alvimuka1853]

As always a pleasure watching you deal with old technology and merry Christmas, keep uploading this great content

[@robertkopp873]

OMG! What a blast from the past. This vid reminded me I have stored away in my garage, a Zip drive with parallel interface and a box of media.

[@shaunspeers2656]

That Zip drive clunk on eject..brings back so many memories! I remember always having to look for Mac formatted drives , could never find them. I eventually just re-formatted IBM ones and they worked seamlessly.

[@kjamison5951]

Many thanks, Christopher! Another fascinating video. Seasons greetings and best wishes for the New Year! My first storage Media were 5.25” floppies. Then 3” (Amstrad CPC6128) followed by 3.5” floppies and ZIP disks. I still have many of the ZIP drives which were SCSI, Parallel Port, USB (separate PSU) and USB bus powered. And I really do not know how many ZIP disks I own, I am still finding them when I clear another box from my last move...

[@RedMageGaming]

I miss my old Zip250 drive. It was a later model that had USB type B connection as well as the older serial port connector on the back. nice smooth translucent blue plastic shell. Sadly she died, I was never able to get it back up and running. It now either lives in storage at a friends house, or in a landfill... I don't think I threw it out. But I can't be absolutely sure I kept it either since I moved so much. I used it a lot in 7th and 8th grade, as USB flash drives were only just becoming a thing, and my zip 250 disks were just so much more storage than the 32 MB flash drives we had. There was also the Magneto Optical Drives, I always wanted to get my hands on one of them but aside from an old scsi one that had a few MO disks at a recycling facility I did DOD wiping for, I never got my hands on one for personal use. The strange hybrid between optical and magnetic media was fascinating, and the big cartridge cases were pretty cool to look at. Down the line Sony's MiniDisk players, and MiniDisks were essentially a smaller form of the magneto optical disk, they were rather nifty. Borrowed one from a friend thing lasted forever on a single AAA battery. You wouldnt happen to have an old Magneto Optical Drive and disk anywhere to show off a video on would you? :D also, Merry Xmas!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Sadly I don't have a magneto optical to showcase. Merry Xmas!

[@johnhaynes9910]

A good walk down Memory Lane remembering Zip and Jaz drives and just to let you know, I was a keen user of Jaz drives which I agree because of their price were a bit niche. However the reason we used them "back in the day" was because we were doing 3D graphics and animations and due to their SCSI interface they were very quick so much so that you could playback animations from them faster than from the average IDE drive of PCs of the period. For creation purposes our PCs were fitted with internal SCSI drives but the Jaz drives became ideal backup solutions for projects during development not least because once you were set up, you just bought extra cartridges as needed and 1GB was very useful which freed up your internal hard drives which had nowhere near the capacity of those available today.

[@geoffreyjohnstone5465]

Oh Zip drives.....I had one of them many, many years ago. I might still have it up in the loft. Its made me all nostalgic, must get it down and see what I was working on 20 years ago.

[@Railfandepot]

"Worse things happen at sea"... that made me laugh hard... it is a good thing I was not drinking anything at the time. Just one of the unexpected nuggets that explain why I like this channel so much. :-)

[@DukeDudeston]

I too chuckled on that bit. Seemed so random, but so right.

[@Marceloalvesgodinho]

I remember the click of death.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Oh yes . . . indeed!

[@jekyllpark5570]

Mine (internal IDE version) "only" had some sort of coma, there'd be a click and I had to do something (don't remember exactly what, eject and re-insert repeatedly or something) to "wake it up" again. Still annoying, though…

[@Marceloalvesgodinho]

@@jekyllpark5570 Exactly, many disappointments !!!

[@AmyraCarter]

I've only heard it from other people's descriptions of the experience. Same with the sound of a CRT going 'pop'.

[@TrueMathSquare]

Hey hard drives got that too.

[@tonybkent]

That video took me back. I also had a zip drive from the first batch in the UK and had it hooked up to my Amiga via SCSI. I bought a Jaz drive too and at one point would have had them daisy chained. There's probably still a Jaz cartridge up in my loft with some Cubase VST recordings from when I eventually moved over to a Gateway 2000 266mhz PC. Ah, memories!

[@luxordeathbed]

I worked 10 years selling computers and parts. Good memories with this vid. Thx.

[@edwincusto]

It's amazing how small storage is getting, the size of your finger pinky nail a microSD can fit 512GB 👍😎

[@RWL2012]

the hard drive in this PC I'm guessing is a 4GB to 10GB 3.5", nowadays they're made more in 4TB to 10TB :)

[@pdamon78]

I really like the way you present your channel posts.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks.

[@MrAl68]

Takes me back... I began working in pre-press in 1994. I reckon it's a fair shout that Mac users in the graphics/prepress world were one of the first big adopters of bigger media, due to the rapidly increasing file size of images, etc. At that time, where I worked, Syquest was the first bigger capacity removable disk we used but they were big and unwieldy. When Zip came along it rapidly gained favour due to it's compact size. We had Macs with Zip built in. Wasn't long before writable CD became cheap enough to oust it though.

[@cesarvidelac]

I am a draftsman, I delivered my graduate exam blueprints in one Zip 100 Mb disk, it felt so higj tech at that time (1998-2000)... but then everything went so fast reaching 2000. Thanks for sharing, great video!

[@piers389]

What I find interesting about SCSI is that we now have SAS because of it. I remember getting my first 2nd-hand server with a SAS backplane for home use. I now have a 24 bay home server with 12gbps SAS (I love arching legally purchased video as I really hate physical media) - 0.7PB and counting 😁 Great video as always, Christopher.

[@Iam_Dunn]

Ahhhhhhh... The “Good ‘ol days”... arrive at the office, hit the power button, go get my coffee, back in time to see the POST FINISH, and enjoy my coffee while the beast awakens.... LOL :)

[@chemmerling]

We used Jaz disks at my High School to backup our email server weekly. It was a very innovative backup tech at the time.

[@jimsteele9261]

Another former Zip drive user here. :-) I had the SCSI external model on the Amiga. It was handy, because I could take 7 disks full of data over to a friend's place who could afford one of the first cd burners. I could also just move the drive between systems when I finally broke down and built a PC. I knew a couple guys with Jazz drives on their Amigas. They were into doing 3D animation, and needed lots of space. BTW, remember the 20MB "Floptical" drive? If memory serves, that one could r/w regular 3.5" disks as well as it's own special 20MB floppies.

[@elwellington]

Brings back so many memories.

[@AmyraCarter]

Ahhh, yes... I remember the 'Jazz' drive. Back in 1997~98, when music files were easily compressed, a friend of mine had one of the jaz drive interfaces in their PC and a 2 GB jaz disk that had over two thousand songs on it, with plenty of room for more. It also had DOOM and Duke Nukem games and a few shump games on it, including Tyrian 2000, which was the first time I was acquainted with blissful FM synth music from Symphonius themselves accompanying Bullet Hell blasting. So fun. These memories were brought back when LGR reviewed these, and are now once again coming back. Simpler, better, easier...(ehhh maybe not easier as I still struggle with computing as much now as I did then), but definitely better times. Nowadays, it would take between six and ten of those 2 GB jaz disks to carry all my music, if only because the compression envelopes are not as small and the bit rate is much higher, lol FTR, I've also used the zip disks, but I've never owned any of the hardware, zip or jaz related. I have used and owned the much older 5 3/4 " floppy disks/hardware though. I still don't know what became of that Apple II. Lost in the move, like so many things (not the best childhood but you know).

[@gregbenwell6173]

God Amy I still have some 5 and a 1/4 inch floppies SOMEPLACE!! LOL And my Jaz Drive is some place sitting in a box that I will probably some day stumble across and beat the thing with a hammer it ever rears its ugly head around me again!! In case you missed what I wrote I had a iOmega Jaz drive and it started literally cutting grooves into my $100 disks!! After it destroyed a couple of them, I wrote iOmega a nasty letter, because my drive was only about 6 months old and the disks were $100 a pop!! They sent me a new drive to replace my original drive and that drive after just three months started doing the SAME EXACT THING!! So I ever get me hands on another iOmega drive (no matter what it is) and I will destroy it some way some how, because iOmega is a blemish on society in my mind!!!

[@joerussophil]

I never had a Zip drive or a jaz drive and I had totally forgot about them until watching this video. But I was in my early teens when I first heard about them when I got my first computer with a 200 MHz processor and windows 95. That was a step above many people when I bought it. That time of computing was almost magical for me. Everything to the icons, the sounds, the devices was part of that experience. You bringing up the Zip drive brought so many memories flooding back.

[@youdud44]

These are interesting pieces of computing history and I was surprised to find three of these powered Zip drives back in August when the building my class was in happened to be clearing out old technology before it was sent to be recycled. Got two PC drives, one Mac, two 250MB PC disks, and one 100MB Mac disk. All three worked and were produced around 2001-2003 and were used up until 2007.

[@craiggybear1807]

Ziptacular video. I had forgotten about the Jaz drives. lol. I think they were always out of my price range. Have many memories though of installing my Windows 95 with 12 floppies. Yep, that didn't take long. hahaha. :)

[@juliusfucik4011]

Try installing Ubuntu 18.04 from a DVD then try installing it from a USB3.0 Stick to an NVME drive. It is ridiculous how spoiled we are nowadays. Solid state all the way!

[@oliverwalsh9614]

Like a zip drive, I was developed in 1992, produced in 1993 and didn't really catch on until 1994

[@litebkt]

I helped start Iomega in the 80s. The higher capacity was primarily because the head could follow the tracks as opposed to the drive stepping the head. Yes we used higher quality media but the magnetic positioning of the drive combined with the fact that the head didn’t make contact with the actual media, well that gave us extremely high densities. I also was privileged to serve on SCSI standards committee.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Really interesting, thanks for sharing here. :)

[@An0therR0gue]

i remember being jealous of people who had the zip drives in the 90's. internet was still difficult to get in homes and only 56k modems, so i basically lived in a local cyber cafe and had about 20-30 floppys in my bag and had to win zip and split file sizes to fit on the floppys then take them home and realize one of them was usually corrupt. i don't miss that. i do miss the cyber cafe though (it was also a cool bar). thanks for the video.

[@xxxggthyf]

We wish you a merry clickmas. I'm surprised he didn't mention the fact that both the drives and the disks were prone to catastrophic failure where the drive would take the disk with it or vice versa. I spent many an unhappy hour couriering these bloody things about all over the country and they were so unreliable I'd as often as not be sent with two identical copies of the disk and a spare drive in the hope that at least some combination would actually manage to get the data from hither to yon. At one point we were estimating the disk life at under 100 uses and the drive life at about 10 hours... Appalling, useless piles of junk for anything other than incredibly light use but at the time the only option for most businesses. Thank god the CD-R and eventually the interwebs finally nailed the coffin shut on these abominations.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I take it you do not miss these then . . . !

[@xxxggthyf]

@@ExplainingComputers Is it that obvious? :-D

[@redpheonix1000]

Ironically, they later released a new format called the Click! Drive. Needless to say, it flopped.

[@MrMrsirr]

@@redpheonix1000 Was that pun intentional?

[@encycl07pedia-]

@@MrMrsirr The onomatopoeia was intentional.

[@Nerd3927]

The marketing department was using the Jaz drives back in the days to prevent them from dumping DTP data everywhere they had write rights on the Novell Netware 3.12 servers. Yes I am getting on a bit :-)

[@greggv8]

Ahh, Netware. I once worked at a company that had a 3.12 server to which they'd forgotten all but one non-Admin password. Their new server had Netware 4.11, sort of. They'd sent their previous CNA to Salt Lake City for their quickie $2,000 course. Then to be helpful, Novell sent her a beta version CD of Netware 4.11. Printed across the face of the disk was NOT FOR USE IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT. I'll give you one guess what she did with that disk. Uh huh. She "Upgraded" the production server with it. Total FUBAR. The release version of 4.11 had been installed over the 4.11 beta that was installed over 4.1. The Administrator account was mostly no longer recognized as the Administrator. It could *delete* user accounts but not *create* them. "You must login as the Administrator to create a new user." or something like that. It could do things to print queues but could not *create* them. After deleting one old user and being unable to create a new one I didn't dare try deleting a print queue or anything else. Administrator was allowed to create tape backup jobs but despite setting automatic run times for them, the system refused to run them automatically. The company had a couple of CNE's sent out from Salt Lake. I showed them all the effed up stuff, they couldn't fix anything. A three day weekend was coming up, some minor holiday. The processing software was a set of fantastically large and complicated DOS batch files, ported from COBOL. It was NOT Year 2000 compliant, but an update was available. The Plan. Wipe all the workstations and install copies of the just released Windows 95 OSR2. Buy a second Netware 4.11 license and install it on the old server for a backup. Do a manual data backup and make damn certain it actually was backed up. Wipe the new server and do a clean install of Netware 4.11. Have the processing software guys fly out from New York to install the Y2K ready version, restore the database and do a run on it. Success most likely assured and no more ARRRGGGHHH! Bob (our VP of Technology and Marketing who pretty much knew nothing about computers, just like the Dilbert character) thought it was a great idea. We took it to the owner, who shot it down. "Too expensive." he said. I had explained, the CNEs had explained, so had some local Novell guru. The system was a dumpster fire, full of metallic sodium (though those were not the exact words). I wanted to say that having the database explode every second day and lose the previous days work was far more costly, but I didn't. Not long after it was decided I was "not a good fit" with the company. Gee, I only tried to save the company was all. In the years since I've never bothered to see if or how long the company lasted afterwards.

[@Nerd3927]

@@greggv8 Thanks for the memories Greg! Unbelievably how simple Servers were back then. All the documentation and skills you needed then fit on just one bookshelf of a bit more then a foot. Now if you want to do VMware it is 20 times more....

[@d.logic1]

Oh I don't miss these at all! I remember having to replace one of these. I had borrowed one from a friend in high school and it died on me. Ended up spending the very little money I could scrounge up and replacing it for him.

[@psorbh1]

My foray with Iomega ZIp drive was very brief. I knew someone who worked at the plant that made these units, and found it interesting to note that the company itself was having to adjust to the quick changes of technology. The other real bit of concern was the cost. Peers I knew would just continue using the standard 1.44mb drives. I was introduced to the bigger drives around the turn of the century, as portability was important for my coursework. I still believe that this technology has use today, if one can still find a way to interface the storage, hello USB 2.0. :^)

[@PaintmanJohn]

And I am another "Fossil User" with BOTH Jazz and Zip drives. I also still maintain an olde DOS pc which I use for EPROM burning and other such "useful" delights , because as you ALL know "DOS IST GUT" !!!

[@OuchesVonDoom]

I still use zip in 2018!!!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Excellent!

[@AndrewTSq]

Myself aswell :D My old synthesizers / samplers have scsi, so I use both internal and external zip-drives. Still working!.

[@OuchesVonDoom]

@@AndrewTSq that's exactly why I'm still using zip mostly for my Roland VP-9000 variphrase processors

[@Demobot1]

Wow. I am actually impressed.

[@MasicoreLord]

I use .zip files in 2018 too!

[@leeoliver2969]

Great trip down memory lane. On top of that you used a good old english expression "Worse things happen at sea".

[@RockRedGenesis]

I have a fondness for the good old Zip Disk and the drives. They literally saved my ass on occasion at collage, helping me transfer project files between home and collage, as CD-Burners/rewriters were not that common (I believe they was two or three CD-re writers in the entire collage and i didn't have one at home till the 2000's and there was more Zip drives around). The Zip became my preferred method of transferring those files around between home and my personal network storage at colage

[@rapscallion3506]

Ah, yes! State of the art in its heyday.

[@oreubens]

100Mb ZIP drives came with more variety than that... - SCSI (8bit, both internal and external models, internal models had more options for SCSI ID selection), these drives were often sold bundled with the Zip ZOOM; an 8bit ISA SCSI card with an D25 out plug, a relabled card from Adaptec)), but you could use any SCSI card if you had the proper cabling (the D-plug on the zip drive made this difficult, you usually had to special order or self make the cable since the D25 isn't a "real" scsi plug. I soldered a couple dozen of these for friends because the store ones were daylight-robbery type expensive. - Paralel port (external) - basic IDE/ATA, the earliest internal drives (these had some issues because IDE was never designed to be eject-able) these were OEM only - ATAPI (internal, the extended ATA also used by CD-ROM, this is the one you're having) - USB 1.1 (external) 250Mb ZIP drives also came in Firewire versions. There was also an external 100Mb Zip PLUS which had both SCSI and parallel port support. This was great for using at home over fast SCSI and parallel port elsewhere. Getting them to work could be an issue too. - DOS typically only supported the parallel port (required a 80286 driver). The SCSI card from IOMega didn't have a DOS driver. So getting the SCSI model on DOS required a SCSI card with a DOS driver, I used a 16bit adaptec and it worked great, although the driver was HUUUGE. - parallel port attachment doesn't work anymore since Windows 7. (though you can buy a USB to paralel port adapter that works). - These ZIP disks were great for transferring files from amiga to PC or vice versa. interesting side note... internally ALL ZIP drives were SCSI. All other external interfaces were integrated conversion interfaces. IOMega also tried to get a niche in higher capacity With the JAZ drive (1Gb/2Gb), but that never caught on as much as the ZIP.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I'm pretty sure I mentioned that external Zip drives came with SCSI, IDE, parallel port or USB interfaces. And the Jaz drive is covered at the end of the video! :)

[@joshdenton611]

i remember those zip disks. I had quite a few of them when taking graphics art classes back at the end of the 1990's.

[@mortarmopp3919]

And of course there was the infamous "click of death" that troubled many early external Zip drive owners. I was one of those, but it gave me an excuse to go to an internal drive setup. Loved those disks.

[@0xc0ffea]

More vintage junk please !!

[@artmcteagle]

Merry Xmas Christopher!

[@ExplainingComputers]

And to you.

[@channelite]

I used a SCSI ZIP with my E-MU ESI-32 digital sampler. I got the sampler in 1995 with 2mb of ram, sounds saved on floppies. Load time was really slow. In 96 I got the scsi card, 8mb of ram and scsi zip. It was great, load and saving time was much faster. Also saving multiple banks on one Zip disk. The zip was the best storage solution for samplers in the mid 90’s.

[@RobbieStrike]

Thanks for the video. In the 90 I did consider a Jaz drive but never could afford one for storing video's on I ended up years later backing up my videos on a CD drive and later DVD and now just external hard Drives. I am sure glad the cost has come down on storage!

[@NicoDsSBCs]

Merry Christmass Christopher. I loved ZIP drives. Made a big change. Otherwise duke nukem3d was +10 floppy disks. We also used a serial cable to copy files. Very slow. I never owed one, but there was always one we could use when doing serial lan party`s. Good times. I`m starting my work on the video editing with SBC video. I think by the end of next week it will be out, I`ll let you know. Have a nice day. Best wishes. NicoD

[@NicoDsSBCs]

If the 8-bit guy would see your old case he`d want to retrobright it :)

[@ExplainingComputers]

I look forward to the SBC video editing video.

[@filipejsbrandao]

I had a USB version of that external Zip drive! Geezz!

[@wildbill23c]

I have a USB and a Parallel version, as well as the internal IDE 250MB Zip drive.

[@peterbrandt7911]

Thanks for refreshing my memories. I used Zips for normal data storage and the Jaz for harddisk recording. I admit, I loved both :).

[@hasansalim1868]

Never got the chance to work with Zip drives. I just jumped from floppies to USB pendrives. Thanks Chris for the nice video. I liked that old yellowish Desktop, it bring back memories.

[@augurseer]

Merry Christmas Chris. Best to you and yours. Hope father Christmas brings something nice. New toys for new year. :)

[@ExplainingComputers]

Merry Christmas Kirk! :)

[@droses1600]

@@ExplainingComputers When the boss of Explaining Computers gets most (or all??) of his hardware and toys from friendly companies who are only too happy for him to review them....what does *he* wish that Santa would bring him? I guess a pair of socks just doesn't cut it with you, eh??? How about the next vid with you wearing a nice fun Xmas jumper instead of your usual black shirt???

[@ExplainingComputers]

Sadly I have already made the video for next week! So the same black shirt. Though I do have a new black shirt for the first videos of 2019. :)

[@GVSolo]

​@@ExplainingComputers Perhaps you will get your long awaited Raspberry Pi 4 for the new year if not Christmas. We can all wish for that.

[@droses1600]

@@ExplainingComputers Aah, you're so organised!! How about tacking on a short video at the end with you in a crazy Christmas jumper giving Mr Scissors and Mr Stanley a couple of Christmassy tasks.......??? Go on, be a devil!!!

[@r1273m]

As we are in reminiscing mode I remember the Micro Drives used on Sinclair QL's. Cannot remember the storage capacity but they never seemed very reliable. Bob.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Ah, microdrives! I used them on both the Spectrum and QL. Sadly, I can no longer find any of them anywhere, even tough I still have a QL under the bed . . .

[@frigbychilwether]

@@ExplainingComputers I've got a spectrum microdrive sitting in a box under my desk. I never used it but my dad had it for the school he worked at. Along with that is also a prism spectrum modem.

[@Ivor_Nastyboil]

Wasn't the ICL One Per Desk (or BT Tonto) based on a QL with microdrives? A strange bit of kit at the time.

[@barthonhoff5547]

As I can remember they were between 108 and 128 kilobyte. Because of it speed and storage problems I moved fast to 3.5 disks with 720kb, just as most QL users I was befriended with.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Yes, the ICL One Per Desk used microdrives too.

[@michelfilion5482]

What a blast from the past..! I too suffered "the click of death" but in Iomega's defense, they replaced my drive, no charge. BTW, the Jaz storage was popular amongst grahic artists, photographers, etc...Basically people who's files went beyond the Zip's capacity

[@RS-lv2lk]

Remember using zip disks at school. Good memories! Thanks. Merry Christmas.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Oh wow more videos starring retro PC please 😀

[@RWL2012]

I second this! Would like to see that particular one in more detail - could've sworn it's in another video but not sure which one...?

[@stanrogers5613]

I can't stand these newfangled gizmos. I'll stick to my Bernoulli Box.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@oreubens]

Crazy expensive that box, but loved this thing. (way way before ZIP came around) At 20Mb per disk and disks being relatively cheap (cheaper than harddisks), the bernouilli provided excellent value per unit of storage and at speeds that could match that era harddisks too (with the scsi port). transfer over the parallel dongle was slow but still beat swapping hundreds of floppies :)

[@samuraiartguy]

I had my own SYQUEST drive... Sometimes I even miss those clunky, expensive, finicky bastards.

[@eminusipi]

I guess that they couldn't stand the pressure.

[@geoffbarton5917]

Engineer on those things too before working on Zip and Jazz. They were expensive, yes, but robust.

[@PauloSilva-ll4vs]

Thank you for the memories, I had an iomega 100mb, I used it to take my softwares written in clipper to my client's computer, and as I had 100mb was so easy to take my sources and clipper compiler, to solve problems in clients office,was simple and powerful.

[@Abishek_Muthian]

Brings back the frustration of checking whether the game would fit the floppy or using .zip/RAR split SW to store the game , But never had the privilege of using Zip/Jaz disks. A pleasant video as always!

[@Jim-be8sj]

I think you should trade in that AMD-K6 for something with a Cyrix processor. :)

[@Hermiel]

Hearing _Iomega_ pronounced with a long E vowel i.e. _eye-oh-MEE-guh_ and not _Eye-oh-MEH-guh_ catches my ear a bit. This video comes at a serendipitous time as I just dug up my media archive including one internal IDE and one external (Parallel) Zip drive. I also have a single Jaz disk and am hunitng down someone with a SCSI rig to help transfer the data. Why didn't you talk about the Click Of Death?

[@thewiirocks]

Be nice. There's a difference in pronunciation between British and American English. In certain cases our pronunciation may be the preferred one (just wait until you hear how they pronounce "taco"!) but it's worth remembering that they feel the same about many words our version of English has changed the pronunciation on. Not worth arguing over. Rather, celebrate the differences. :)

[@Oldgamingfart]

I used to have an external parallel port Zip 100, and then later an internal IDE Zip 250. Both were an absolute lifesaver in the early 2000's when I discovered (the hard way!) that I had one of the notorious failing Fujitsu hard drives! The good thing about Zip is that it's very DOS friendly - much like using a large floppy drive. It was then a job of steadily copying everything of importance from the ailing Fujitsu. I had to continually hit the hard drive's controller IC with freezer spray (OK, an upended can of air duster!), otherwise it would overheat and lock up! I recall the drive croaked permanently not long afterwards..but all was not lost, thanks to good ol' Zip! :')

[@esould]

This brought me back in the times where 800x600 was the standard resolution and 1280x1024 was high res. When i first used a 1280x1024 monitor the text looked so small !

[@positronundervolt4799]

Worse things happen at C, like installing Windows.

[@amnottabs]

It's now safe to turn off your computer.

[@maicod]

can we also turn off youtube before we go to sleep :D

[@memememegaming]

It's now safe to turn on your computer.

[@RWL2012]

has anyone seen the Windows XP version of that screen...? My upgraded Pentium II 333 displayed it until I found the "fast shutdown" option in the BIOS

[@saidbakr]

You have remembered me with those days when I had to remove my computer's hard disk to get some large files from a friend or even getting some recent Norton anti virus updates! I'm talking about 1998 in Egypt.

[@anstef1485]

Thank you very much for a trip down memory lane ...! Still have an external 250mb model in storage somewhere... along with a 1.2mb 3.5in floppy disk drive, and a 1.44mb 2.5in disk drive...

[@CreepebrineMC]

Please do Windows 10 on ARM on a Raspberry Pi ;) would be nice as I am currently trying this

[@augurseer]

Agreed

[@timallenphotogram]

This takes me back. Jaz drives were great when they worked...

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@florentan]

We used dozens of Zip and Jaz drives on each project offshore for massive amounts of survey data. We also used many, many magneto-optical drives. All fascinating tech. I also suffered a "Click of Death" event with my first Zip drive. Iomega lost a bunch of money replacing defective Zip drives under warranty. They showed corporate responsibility quite well in their response to claims like this.

[@mikeworrell1316]

I used to work at Kinko's (the copy shop and printers that existed in the US until the late 90's). All our machines had ZIP drives, and people would leave their ZIP disks at the stations all the time. I would put them in the lost and found, and claim them after a few weeks. I had 7 or 8 by the time I bought my CD-RW drive and my first USB drives.

[@evanj571]

I remembered the floppy discs! The ones that were really floppy. Then came the 3.5" floppy drive, then the zip drive, and from there the CD, and then I'm really glad they invented the almighty USB! A nice trip down memory lane for me 😊👍

[@joshman5217]

Ahhh, nostalgia, I remember using Floppy and ZIP disks on my very first computer, an iMac G3. Much has changed since then! Thank you for your video sir! Hope you have a great week and a Merry Christmas.

[@ExplainingComputers]

In theory, a Raspberry Pi could access a USB Zip drive, with the right driver software . . . Merry Christmas. :)

[@briancrane7634]

Thrilling walk down memory lane! But it also recalls some CHILLS! Some GHOSTS! Some of my *precious data was LOST in the DREADED CLICK OF DEATH!* Yes! Data LOST! IRRETRIEVABLY! My bosses didn't like that one bit I can tell you. I spent a couple of extra unpaid weekends setting that right! Fortunately today's disk drives NEVER FAIL! Do they!...Do they? Many thanks for another fine video!

[@AndrewGulak]

I'm glad I'm not crazy. I spent hours upon hours trying to recover customers data from these disks. The failure rate of both the media and the drives themselves was well over 40% (and in some cases even higher). I mean, some of them were just dipshits that didn't know not to store them in top of/ next to unshielded speakers (magnetic damage) or on the dashboard/ boot of their car. But lots of them had no clear reason to have failed. I felt your love for the technology, and it was great to see W98 boot up! Great job Chris!

[@TheBodgybrothers]

Back in the good old days. It doesn't feel it's been that long ago.

[@tkarlmann]

I love your commentary: "Worse things happen at sea"!

[@CommodoreFan64]

Takes me right back to high school when I use to carry a 100MB Parallel port Zip drive in my backpack for my computer network technologies class, I went threw 2 of them due to click of death, and then moved onto compact flash cards, and readers as my family had gotten into digital photos early on, and we had spare CF cards with 64MB and a crazy 128MB capacity!!

[@GVSolo]

One use that I had for my Zip drive was for running the CCS64 Commodore 64 emulator. It worked quite nicely.

[@davidbythew]

Thank you - a blast from the past. I used these a lot on a Mac for music production in teh 90's - I also remember (and went through the pain) of the "Click of death" - and lost a large proportion of files and back ups - for me that was the end of iomega zip drives...