Iomega Zip 100 drive

My Iomega Zip 100 drive works with a driver on a RISC Pc. WIll it work with the same driver on any of the modern computers, e.g., Raspberry Pi, ARMX6, Titaniuim, Pandaboard etc., or is there a driver that will work? It’s a parallel port drive and so it would need an adaptor to work on some of these computers.

In an old thread on this forum there was some discussion of using an Iomega Zip 250 drive on a Raspberry Pi, and so there is some hope, presumably, that I might get it to work on current computers.

Hi David,

My Iomega Zip 100 drive works with a driver on a RISC Pc. WIll it work with the same driver on any of the modern computers, e.g., Raspberry Pi, ARMX6, Titaniuim, Pandaboard etc.

Not with the original driver for 26 bit era RISC OS, no. The modern computers requires 32 bit Modules (your Zip driver should have been a module IIRC).

I am not aware of a 32bitted version, however here is a link to Partis Computing with more info on the original drivers I used back then:

http://www.partis.org/shop/main.php?subsection=products/riscos/filesystems/zip/powerzip.txt&sid=3ci4go6tf3lp2c24irhvccqbp0

CJE also offers the old driver 26 bit, maybe is worth sending them an email to see if there was a 32 bit version?

http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=ARG-ZIPD100

AFAIR the Iomega Zip 100 was on Parallel port, so even if the driver has been 32 bitted, the Raspberry Pi, Pandaboard and few other modern machine do not have a parallel port, so you may have to find a “hat” or a “parallel to USB” converter in which case the original driver most likely will not work.

Just my 0.5c

In an old thread on this forum there was some discussion of using an Iomega Zip 250 drive on a Raspberry Pi

That was me. My Zip250 drive has a USB interface, so it was plug-in-and-go (apart from the issue with the Eject button, natch).

As Paolo says, getting a parallel-port Zip drive working on a modern machine may be more challenging.

Thanks for responses, it doesn’t look too hopeful.

I have to ask why you would want to use a Zip drive anyway. Even if you could get it working (and the likelihood of that looks vanishingly small), Zip discs are big, only 100MB capacity, and those you can get hold of would be very old, so the binder of the magnetic coating would probably be degraded.

SDHC cards or USB sticks would seem to be a much cheaper and better solution.

If you have important data on Zip discs that you want to recover, it’s a different matter entirely, of course.

Elesar make a parallel and serial port hat for the Pi, but the Zip drive software is only 26bit, so that’s not much help.

USB Zip drives, however, seem to sell from around £45 and they should ‘just work’ on the Pi, no extra software required.

As Dave say, probably best to transfer your files to a more modern medium once you get them off the Zip discs.

The reason is to access some old files and copy them to to some modern storage. I have old computers with parallel sockets that I can use, but they are on the floor deep under piles of stuff and thought it easier to get an adaptor for use with a modern machine. If there is no 32-bit driver, perhaps it would work with the 26-bit driver under Aemulor?

I have a USB Zip drive connected to my ARMX6 and which is in use every day, though not for the reason you might think. Without it, the ARMX6 just will not boot up. With it, everything is fine.
Anyway, I am quite happy to copy your discs for you, if you can get them to me, and return the contents on something more modern.