IOMega ZIP

ZIP disks gained some popularity in home computer use, and ZIP drives were installed even in some Apple Macintosh computers by manufacturer. They became quite popular "larger floppy", and even some scientific imaging devices had ZIP drives built-in. Included software offered ease of use - to use ZIP drive in a new computer, for example to show some images or presentation, it was needed only to run one program. Driver installed itself and opened a new drive letter for drive. ZIP drives could be attached to parallel port, SCSI (there were combo versions - SCSI and parallel, depending of cable installed) or IDE (ATAPI - early pure-IDE versions are very rare), and later units had USB capabilities. After USB flash drives came to market, IOMega released 750MB ZIP, but it was too late for it and 750MB ZIP never gained popularity.

 Unfortunately ZIP drives were prone to click-of-death failures. These failures (their mechanism is described in FAQ) could cause data and media loss. Branding portable ZIP-like drive "IOMega Click!" was not a good idea when these problems came out :).

Manufacturer: IOMega

Type: Disks and drive
Capacity:  100MB, 250MB


 

    

To run ZIP drive, you must have ZIP Tools or ZIP Guest driver. IOMega released drivers in packages, so usually ZIP 250 driver package contain older driver for 100, and it may contain even drivers for IDE, ATAPI or parallel port drives. IOMegaware is a big package containing nearly all drivers. Zip Tools is a full suite of software, while ZIP Guest is a simple DOS driver only to run ZIP drive and access files. There are also Win95 versions of Guest tool.

Under DOS, you usually run guest with paraleter letter, like:
   guest letter=z
installs ZIP under letter Z. Make sure the letter is not forbidden by LASTDRIVE. Parallel port ZIP won't work with unidirectional ports. More about using ZIP drivers can be read in this site.

Unfortunately IOMega can't go along with download links on their own website, they change it frequently and make dead links in support pages, especially for older platforms, so I have to waste my hosting bandwidth and put here essentials which allow to use ZIP with old computers.

So, For Windows 98, 2K, ME, XP or 3.x, just download JAZ pack (part1, part2, part3).
For Windows 95 and NT, try this: (part1 part2 part3 part4 part5). This archive contains 3.11 and 3.06 old versions.
DOS: Guest may be used, here is a version 5.4. here's older 4.2 with all driver package. Packages contain Guest95 too. This package contains earlier versions of GUEST (3.x, 4.x, 5.0), you should also check this as it contains minimum driver sets for parallel port and SCSI.
If you want to get a full-service package for DOS and Windows, with all these fireworks like a ZIP presentation, get this file: (DOS/Win3.11 1 DOS/Win3.11 2 DOS/Win3.11 3 Win95 1 Win95 2 Win95 3 Win95 4 Win95 5 Win95 6 Help 1 Help 2 Help 3 Help 4).
This is OS/2 package. Not tested: Here

There are some alternative drivers such as commercial PalmZip, which can work under DOS with very old computers (8086).

 
Notice difference between ZIP 100 and 250MB in reflective surface (250MB on the right). Record=it was a sound streaming application which allowed to record sound directly to a ZIP disk.


Not only IOMega made ZIPs, and many companies made accessories for ZIP drives: media towers or carrying bags which made a normal ZIP drive an easy portable device.


ZIP ATAPI version and SCSI (100MB).


ZIP power supply and 250MB Plus version (SCSI and parallel port)