ZIP DRIVE

and what will it do for your amiga !



so you want a new fangled device for your amiga , some common compatibility answers and the general install and other bits and bytes regarding it and you B]

first things first though , namely do you want a zip drive and what about the competition? actually the only worthwhile competition thats comparable with the zip drive is either sony's LS 120 drive, a cd-r writer or a jaz drive. well as you (hopefully) knoow the zip drive is actually a glorified diskdrive with a load of space (100mb on the older zip drives and 110 mb on the plus versions but still compatible between each other). sony's ls120 drive is a little larger in storage capacity (120 mb B] ) but seems to be pesterd by an extreme price tag which is sometimes even more then twice the price of a zip drive so leaves that competitor out . the cd-r writer is dropping prices fast and ofcourse has a huge storage capability and its cd-r's are as cheap as they can get (2$ usually compared to 12$ for a zip disk) and ofcourse have the advantage that cd roms are practically everywhere even on amiga as well as offer more storage room .. however the cd rewritables are still too expensive to come close and is the only one to offer rewriting over the same parts of a disc like the zip easily can so thats 1 competitor you might want to know about) and the jaz drive is more a glorified zip drive with the capability of 1 and 2 gb size disks these days and is ofcourse a lot more expensive then the zip drive so we'll leave that 1 out of the competition list. if you want to do major backups on fast mediums (so not counting tapes for accesibility) then you might want to consider cd-r as a good option, hoowever we're going to examine the zip more thoroughly here as thats the one i got B]( i seemed to have lost my cd-r !)

which drive?

So you want a zip drive .. then beware as not all of them are for you ! there are mainly 3 versions of the zip drive (excluding the zip plus for a moment as it will be described later)namely the scsi version, the ide version and the parralel version of the zip drive. (never mind the external and internal versions of the scsi and ide drives) All these versions are fine for your amiga except the parralel version . the parralel version cannot (or better could not) be used on your amiga . Recently a hack appeared an aminet describing how to use a parralel drive on your amiga. I haven't checked it out but i suppose it works but the probem with parralel is that its incredibly sow compared to ide and scsi so on the safe and finer side its still better to get the scsi and ide version ofcourse . the parralel version ofcourse has the benefit to be connected to nearly any computer while in the case of ide and scsi you need to find a port left to connect your zip drive to. As luck was with me i got hold of the external scsi version and happend to have a nippy scsi card (a blizzard ppc scsi2 ).

INSTALLING wee's and woo's!

well the fiirst problem seemed to arrive quickly in the form of cables .... scsi is fine and very compatible with all of its standards it dosn't take away the hassle of getting the right cable for all those different ports! luckily i knew which one to get and soon arrived at the shop .... AIEEEEEEEEE my heart just dropped dead on the floor and was crushed under the heels of the salesmen who just told me the INCREDIBLY HIGH price for just that cable. after being dragged to safety and a replacement heart was quickly inserted into my chest i went to another store for some other bits and bobs who supposedly didn't have the cable .. then i began to escape my comatose as the salesmen applied reanimation techniques with the correct cable and a whole lot cheaper then its competitor . moral : check around for cheaper cables it doesn't just save a few bucks .. it saves a whole lot of bucks! and yes i did check around before but they didn't seem to have any back then ) after that fright i quickly got home and connected it all up and it seemed to work but i needed the dosdrivers or whatever utility to actually let my amiga know it was now the possesor of a new enslaved zip drive. so i quickly got to aminet and downed the first set of zip tools i came across. 5 minutes later unpacking and installing it i found the zip drive still not recognised and after a reboot my system wouldn't even boot anymore. ARGH this is not good and after some hectic checking i found te dosdrivers of the ziptools to be the soul cause of my troubles so i bravely deleted them ... rebooted and jumped onto irc for some online help. 5 minutes later 'steveo' got me proper the dosdriver for amiga zipdrives and told me which bits to alter (scsi.device name and id number if at all) and soon i still didn't see any sign of the zip disk ... this was because it was pc formatted (a bad format if any B]) and steveo handed me the appropriatte dos drivers and finally i saw the disk coming into view.. 5 minutes later i was happily playing along with my zip drive without ANY hitches for ejecting or inserting discs or reading writing along on them.

so is it fast ?

well at first i checked some speed info's . the scsi (and the ide probably too ) version seemed to ZIP along at the steady pace of 1mb/sec (may be able to up this with certain buffers and other bits and bobs like editing the zip dos drivers) this might not be world shattering but its VERY good for any continuos usage and copying to and from the drive again just zipped along (practically no wait with 1mb files except for the harddrive to keep up B] and any larger files also were of no concerns B] i won't bother you with all kinds ofnumbrs (tose depend on your system performance as well as the zip drive but suffice to say it works way better then a diskdrive and i know some people with zip drives so i'lll be happily exchanging large files for sometime (also ideal for cd-r backup B]) and not t mention all its oter uses , normal backups, animation recording, hd extension, exxpensive square frisbees, world domination and whatever you can think of for 100mb disks B]

hey what about that zip plus, and what is the zip disease?!

well nothing much to tell ut te zip plus drive is more of an update of the zip drive range which combines the scsi and paralel version (able to connect both) and some small hw compression enabling 110 mb on a disk giving some extra punch for your money . its probably also a bit faster and more reliable (not that i have seen anything else with zip drives yet.) its also a bit more expensive and its just as good to get that internal ide zip drive (remember most ide drives only allow 2 ide devices ...) or that cool external scsi zip drive which is easy to reconnect in case you don't know may other people with zip drives. (note there are a lot of zip drives around so this is not much of a prob B] ) Then tere is the dreaded zip disease (name coined by others soo don't bug me about it B] ) its essentially when a zip disk goes bust. it starts clicking a lot when you enter it into a zip drive and is then usually unrepairable (the disk not the drive ) the drive is fine and just needs a good disk to contiinue B] the bad thing is ofcourse the expensive disks but then again they do see to last B] so enjoy your zip drive if you get any and don't forget to check prices as they can differ a LOT!