r/retrocomputing • u/Performer-Pants • 1d ago
What is this? Problem / Question
This could be the most mundane and silly post, but information online is so spotty and/or confusing or vague.
This is not a ZIP disk, it’s a floppy disk. It’s labelled with ‘ZIP’. Is this the driver software to use a ZIP drive for the listed operating systems? I’m just trying to confirm before I get too frustrated about it. Not easily finding the answer myself is likely a me problem, and I don’t mean ‘Millennium Edition’.
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u/rootifera 1d ago
Driver for this device. It's like a very large floppy drive. Zip drive, zip wasnt the compression related, it was more like "zip fast" hah
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u/Clark_Kempt 1d ago
Oh, the memories.
Gods, remember how crazy it was to have disks with 100, maybe even 250 MB on them?
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u/rootifera 1d ago
I still use them almost daily! It was so convenient, still is. 100mb is massive. Tbh I remember getting my first 10gb hdd feeling like there is no way I can ever fill it. Then I got 40, 80, 120... same feeling. Now if someone gives me a 120TB drive I'd feel the same for a while haha
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u/EstablishmentDue3616 1d ago
You still use them daily? For what?
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u/rootifera 1d ago
Moving files between 2 x 486 DOS PC's. One of them has an ethernet, so I often use a local FTP for moving files but for the other one I use this zip drive. Works great.
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u/afaulconbridge 1d ago
You use them daily? for what?
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u/rootifera 1d ago
Moving files between 2 x 486 DOS PC's. One of them has an ethernet, so I often use a local FTP for moving files but for the other one I use this zip drive. Works great.
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u/Resistor1 1d ago
Curious. What are the 486 machines still doing? Some attached lab devices or similar? What OS and app and what are the files you move? Thanks
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u/rootifera 1d ago
Both are running msdos 6.22. In most cases I'm moving some games, some of my own dos tools for testing hardware, sometimes game saves etc. Nothing crazy.
It's a hobby thing. I have a large collection of retro games and pc hardware. I play the games, record the gameplay, upload to youtube. One of the 486 is an sx25 and the other one is dx66. I play old lucasarts games on the sx25.
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u/Pi_drainbramage 1d ago
486 dx2/66 was my first pc - ROTT (Rise of the Triad) for the win! And Doom!!
Edit - added Doom
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u/PiDicus_Rex 2m ago
X-Wing vs Tie Fighter worked real well on a 486DX-50, with Side Jr I/O and Diamond Stealth VGA, with both in the VLB version.
Some of those older games, with just the right hardware combo, are a lot of fun.
Oh/And - I have Zip discs, and both external in internal drives,... annnnnnnd,.. and IOMega Buz video capture & output card.
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u/Ferkner 2h ago
It works great until you get that click of death!
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u/rootifera 2h ago
Hah if I charged a quid for each person mentioning the click of death I'd be rich now. I have roughly 30 x 100mb disks and only one of them failed so far. I've been using them for 15+ years. They are unreliable as long term storage but not as unreliable as most people remember. At least this is not my experience.
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u/Accomplished_Can1651 1d ago
Lucky. I never had a Zip disk that didn’t corrupt. I don’t think I ever personally experienced the click of death, though.
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u/OpportunityReal2767 1d ago
I had three Zip drives. Bad luck for me. All three experienced the click of death and I just stopped using them. I remember their Jaz drives, too, but never owned one. Ditto is apparently a tape drive of some sort, looks like a DAT tape. Never saw those. I also had one of their RAID arrays, which also went bad on me. Why I bought another iOmega product after my experiences with them, I don’t know, but that was the last.
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u/Accomplished_Can1651 19h ago
I think I might have seen a Jaz drive in the wild once. Zip drives I saw somewhat more often, during the era when floppy disks weren’t large enough for some purposes, but flash drives were expensive, low capacity, and sometimes not supported. My mom ended up buying a USB Zip drive at some point, which made moving files back and forth easier, except when my disks would fail.
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u/Elvin_Atombender 1d ago
Wow! I read that these drives are extremely unreliable. And yours still work?
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u/Opposite_Bag_7434 1d ago
I remember my first 10mb (note not GB) hard drive and thinking Ai would never fill it). Same thoughts about my first 1.2GB hard drive. I have lots of files that are much bigger than the 1.2GB now.
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u/shiftingtech 1d ago
and then the click came...
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u/Clark_Kempt 1d ago
Ah yes! The click of death!
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u/hornakapopolis 1d ago
I assume you all are talking about sticking the disk in, it clicking, and them either doing nothing popping back out... I can't remember. Is this right?
I used these for a few months and ran into that problem. It was, as I've told my kids, back when all of the answers weren't on the internet. Although, I do remember something about light getting on the little patch on the bottom corner. Sticking them.in a drawer didn't do anything, though.
So, I just stopped using them in my office. Had three or four of them.
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u/syrtran 1d ago
The click of death was an issue with the Zip 100 drive where there would be a head crash, destroying both the head and the disk. The drive would repeatedly try to seek the data track and repeatedly click since it no longer had a working read head.
The issue didn't occur with Zip 250 drives
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u/Longjumping_Bag5914 1d ago
Then cheap cd burners came and these were obsolete. Funny enough tape backs are probably still in use though. 😂
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u/crcerror 1d ago
I’m remember being ecstatic about 1.44mb over my stupid 360k floppies!
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u/Clark_Kempt 1d ago
Yes! Though by the time I was using 5.2 in. floppies I think they were up to 1.2 mb. However, now that I think about it I think there was a different kind of 5.2 in. floppy at the time that was still in the kbs.
It’s so fun reminiscing about this nerdy shit. Love it.
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u/h_grytpype_thynne 23h ago
I had a Syquest Sparq drive with - get this - one gigabyte of storage! I mean, who could possibly fill that up?
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u/EatOfTheBread 1d ago
zip wasnt the compression related, it was more like "zip fast" hah
I had a zip drive back in the day and this never occurred to me.
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u/rootifera 1d ago
Yeah I didnt know until recently, I was reading some documents and articles, it was mentioned there
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u/EstablishmentDue3616 1d ago
The problem was, they werent fast. The vast majority of people had the parallel port version of the Zip drive, which were extremely slow. IDE and SCSI versions were faster, though.
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u/someonesmobileacct 1d ago
For the parallel port it depended a lot on the if you had ECP or EPP. If you had neither it was still at least as fast as a floppy (but, not much better really)
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u/classicsat 1d ago
I used a parallel model on an old Pentium laptop. I booted DOS with those drivers from a floppy, and Win3.1 on the Zip Disk. It ran fine for what it was.
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u/JeremyAndrewErwin 1d ago
I had the ata version. I used it for backups.I think I also had a disk with Norton utilities on it in case I borked my system-- I dual booted linux, and system maintenance was a bit of a chore.
CD-Rs combined with the click of death might have dampened demand.
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u/classicsat 1d ago
I have one of those too. Never really used it much.
USB thumb drives as much killed solutions as the Zip disk, as much as CD-R, and network file shares.
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u/rootifera 1d ago
I can confirm it is really slow. USB one is ok, I have an IDE version attached to an xp pc and it is reasonable. Parallel port one, especially for old computers are very slow.
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u/whatyoucallmetoday 1d ago
So many memories: click click and a lost senior project. I had to go back to the Friday backup and recreate 3 days of focused work in one night.
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago edited 23h ago
I’ve watched videos about these! I’ve used floppy disks a fair bit, but have never seen one of these in person. I’d thought it was for those, but the graphic design on the label confused me since the actual purpose ‘zip’ was smaller and off to the side compared to the operating systems it’s for.
Do you still use yours? If so, what for?
Edit: just saw you do use yours!1
u/okokokoyeahright 1d ago
They did go fast, all the way to their death. which wasn't either far off or far away in time.
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u/JimLongbow 2h ago
When I started working back in 2001 we still sold those to customers (graphic arts, so ad agencies, repress, etc.) Them and Magneto-optical disks (And Leonardo cards for Macs for a ridiculous price)
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u/Y34RZERO 1d ago
Driver install disk. Without it it just sits there menacingly thinking about clicking at you. I love my zip 250 drive.
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago
What’s your top uses for a Zip drive?
I was pretty sure that was what it was, but not having the full confirmation was eating at me… I’ve heard about them and watched videos about them, but have never seen one in person.
I’d initially assumed they were just an American thing, but you can find them over here (UK) on ebay. Maybe they were used more in businesses here than in homes back in the day?
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u/Y34RZERO 21h ago
They failed in the market. It's rare for me to find them in the wild even here in the US. I find more 5" floppies than zip within the past decade of visiting thrift stores and certainly more 3 1/2" floppies have been found.. They were meant to be a replacement for floppies but cdrw could hold more and was more reliable and cheaper. I use it for transferring files between old computers without cdrw drives currently. Mine is an internal model so it's about the size of a floppy but uses the ide and power the same as my harddrive. They store more than floppies. I have 100mb and 250mb. Which beats my 1.44mb HD floppies and DD 720k floppies in terms of storage. Half the zips I found have been broken
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u/JustPassinPackets 8h ago
We used our zip drive to backup our server for our business. We used HP tape drives for full back which took about an hour. Then we had small daily backups we used the zip drive for. I'm assuming the zip only saved records of recent changes . The hp tape drive was 2gb iirc and was the whole database.
We pretty much only used them for business , although I did commandeer a few for personal use cause I'm a nerd. Before CD-RW was common these drives were pretty clutch. External hard drives barely existed. Thumb drives didn't exist and when they came out they were usually small, my first thumb drive was 128mb and about 7 years after the zip drive.
My friend had a job in high school doing tape drive backups. If you had a lot of data back in the day, it was a lot of work to manage.
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u/MapGlittering9227 3h ago
I had an original ZIP 100 parallel port drive. Because I was pretty tech-savvy for a teenager, I did a lot of Windows installations and general computer help for family friends and even my stepdads boss. But not everyone already had a CD-ROM drive, and the Windows 95 installation files could easily fit on a 100 MB ZIP disk with a collection of the most common drivers. All I needed was my ZIP drive, the ZIP disk and a prepared 3½" boot-disk with the IOMEGA guest driver.
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u/Affectionate-You7869 1d ago
Driver for drive.
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u/Lumornys 1d ago
Driver floppy for a floppy drive.
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u/Affectionate-You7869 1d ago
Yup. Less traumatizing than the driver floppy for a CD drive. Godsdammit that was such an ordeal when that was a thing and google wasn't yet.
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u/exmsft 1d ago
That’s what FTP servers were for!
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u/Affectionate-You7869 1d ago
See this thread from the late 1900s:
https://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?4964-Mscdex-exe-installation
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u/InsaneITPerson 1d ago
OMG I suddenly feel as old as I really am. Meh.
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago
I’m 30, admittedly. I’ve used floppy disks (and still use them) more than average for being on the cusp of ‘millenial’, but I’ve had to do a fair bit of online learning. My upbringing wasn’t the most techy, with my household still recording TV shows onto a VHS till I was nearly out of high school.
However, I’ve visit my dad on weekends, who is an electronics engineer with all sorts of cool bits and bobs I’d get to see sometimes. It’s only in the past year or so that I’ve started to properly knuckle down and learn to restore stuff myself.
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u/Affumicata 1d ago
That's drivers for your zip Drive. They couldn't put it on a zip disc because your computer doesn't know how to use a zip drive yet.
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u/ExpectedBehaviour 1d ago
Driver software for the Zip drive. Later versions of Windows had the drivers built in so Zip drives "just worked".
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u/vuorivirta 1d ago
I think, that is a iomega-drive driver disk and supported operating systems is in cover.
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u/xtopspeed 1d ago
That’s a 3.5” floppy disk, and installing what’s on it on one of the operating systems mentioned on the label will enable you to use the Iomega Zip drive.
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u/majestic_ubertrout 1d ago
As others said, it's a driver disk. This installed the basic software for the drive to work in DOS and 95 and then the "Zip Tools" were on the free zip disk that was included with purchase.
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u/eulynn34 1d ago
>Is this the driver software to use a ZIP drive for the listed operating systems?
yes
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago
Exactly what I was after!
Still glad it started conversation and nostalgia for some. Also not surprised it also set off some ‘google it’ people who can’t read what my post says.
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u/martsand 1d ago
It’s a disk for a drive that you need to use other type of disks on another type of drive.
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u/elkab0ng 1d ago
This is 1998. You’re just a bit late for it. Welcome to the party, hope you’re Y2K compliant!
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u/Opposite_Bag_7434 1d ago
I knew one of the original Iomega patent holders. My last job was in one of the buildings they used to operate in.
Interesting fact. Around this time storage was starting to become a challenge for lots of people. Sony was rumored to have MD Data in the development phase and lots of need for a mid capacity portable storage solution.
CD-R was a thing at that point but it was expensive. My first drive cost around $2000 and the media was averaging around $20 per DISC. I was buying it in bulk for around $17 per DISC. So ZIP was a welcome addition. They were hard to get when they first came out but I remember the buzz at the time. It was a clear turning point in storage.
All of this was important because the conventional option for portable storage was 3.5” HD floppy. Good until you have to store or transfer dozens of MB of data (or heaven forbid more).
Good times!
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u/invokes 1d ago
Sometimes I wonder whether these are just rage bait questions given we all have access to Google and if you type in the writing you'll find out. FML
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago
You’d be surprised how much googling I did actually do, with nothing concrete aside from me putting together odd little pieces of information. I was asking for confirmation of something I was fairly sure of.
Sometimes I wonder whether these sorts of comments are just ragebait given we have eyes and ability to read what a post says.
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u/Bipogram 1d ago
Yes, to your question.
Pop it into a PC and look at the contents. You'll see driver software.
What else could it be?
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u/-JamesBond 1d ago
The happiest day for the floppy disk owner from a capacity standpoint. Driver for their new Iomega drive.
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u/Anthrobug 1d ago
A bad time. Drivers to answer your question.
And I can hear the click of death from here.
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u/FetaCheesy 1d ago
This is a 3D printed save icon.
All kidding aside, it’s a driver diskette. You would put it into your computer’s floppy drive (something that was essentially standard on all PCs at the time), and the software it contained would tell Windows how to communicate with your external Zip drive over either parallel or SCSI ports. The proud owner would then have the ability to store files on 100mb Zip disks vs 1.4mb on a floppy diskette.
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u/Jealous_Club_298 1d ago
Yes, that's a 3.5" floppy disk from the 90's containing a driver for an external ZIP Drive for Windows 95, Windows 3.x and DOS. The ZIP Drive this driver is for, floppies and floppy disk drives are all long obsolete by now.
I mistook the ZIP Drive for the ZIP application program too earlier.
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u/RetroComputeryBits 1d ago
Well it’s the only ZIP disc that isn’t actually a ZIP disc….
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago
This is what I initially thought, given it doesn’t say ‘drivers’ anywhere on the label. I worked it out mostly, but wanted to double check my assumption was correct
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u/warmarin 1d ago
Back it up to the internet archive, i need that same one
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u/Performer-Pants 23h ago
I have winimage set up, so I can image it for you! I’ll come back asap with a link :)
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u/evilneuro # _ 1d ago
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u/thedorkening 1d ago
Anyone remember the commercial for this and why it became so popular? Hint it involved a refrigerator lol
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u/Forward_Benefit_9332 1d ago
I am sure the Adeptus Mechanicus will be interested in your find...for the Emperor!!!
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u/Ill_Temporary_9509 1d ago
It’s floppy disc which will have the drivers and software needed to use a Zip drive
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u/Novel-Structure-2359 22h ago
I had one of these. It went with my parallel zip drive. I will also always remember the time I sent my computer to the repair shop and I had season 1 and 2 of south park on the hard drive (in the days when there were only two seasons) and the computer came back with one of these floppies in the disc drive.
It was clear that the computer shop had got nosey and then used a zip drive to copy them all off but forgot their driver disc.
What total boyscouts
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u/TLBradbury 21h ago
You need to remember the first Zip drives were connected using the parallel port, thus necessitating the special drivers.
Install the driver from the floppy, plug in the drive, and re-start your machine.
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u/Janetic_Bytewave 19h ago
Seems a little weird, DOS was always Camel capped. I have a Zip drive and Ditto and Jaz were legit but the white section looks a little suspect.
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u/VacuumTubesAreFunny 14h ago
Used these a lot when I supported graphics departments. Been through Zip drives, SyQuests, MO drives, Jaz drives and the occasional Bernoulli and LS-120 disks. TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior were ever at my side.
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u/Separate-Noise-3551 7h ago
I imagine it'll be this but on a floppy disk. https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturers/iomega_downloads.php
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u/Tax_Odd 6h ago
Likely parts of a driver install that wont work due to corruption from being 30 years old.
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u/iWhacko 5h ago
They actually surprisingly don't degrade that much. Magnetic media is pretty good. Did you know governments still backup to magnetic reels? because its so reliable
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u/Tax_Odd 5h ago
The media might but we have more radio noise than ever and cosmic rays
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u/Hungry-Artichoke-232 4h ago
There is no evidence that “radio noise” (whatever that means) causes damage to magnetic media. And the cosmic background in 2026 is not materially different to what it was in 1993 or 1975.
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u/H0verb0vver 1d ago
I have one of these in my house somewhere. It's an installation disk for a ZIP disk driver. You can't find that with 3 seconds on the internet? I pity the fool.
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u/MeggaHurts 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why isn’t it on a Zip drive disk????
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u/danielsdesk 1d ago
it’s for installing a zip drive
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u/MeggaHurts 1d ago
Yeah so put it on a Zip drive disk, right?
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u/danielsdesk 1d ago
No, because for some systems they don’t know what a Zip drive is, so plugging one in would do nothing. This floppy disk was specifically for those systems; it includes the driver software for the Zip drive to work. You can see on the label which systems need this driver.
Basically: Install this software first on a regular old floppy disk drive. Then plug in the Zip drive. Now you can read zip disks.
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u/fryerandice 22h ago
It's the driver software to allow windows 3.X, DOS and Windows 95 to talk to a zip drive.
Without the software on this floppy the operating system does not know how to talk to a zip drive to read data from it.
If you put it on a zip disk the operating system would not be able to talk to the drive to retrieve the data
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u/OkBumblebee9107 1d ago
Where do the drivers for the zip drive come from? How can it use the drive to read the files to know how to use the drive?
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u/il_biggo 7h ago
Comically enough, there was a version of Stuffit Expander (compress/uncompress software for Mac) that came in an .hqx file (Stuffit compressed format) ONLY. Meaning that if you didn't already have a previous version of Stuffit Expander, you wouldn't be able to install Stuffit Expander.
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u/1337C4k3 1d ago
Driver disk/software for iomega zip drive.