Wow! 30pin SIMM with the stand-off pin extensions. That takes me back...
If you're up to it, that might be fixable if the heads are not damaged. I can walk you through it if you'd like..
Yeah. Those SIPPs are the first ones I see in the flesh.
Now I need a few suitable mobos to complete the "kit".
If you have any ideas in regard to the ZIP 100 I'd appreciate your insight.
The unit has already been tampered with. By the looks of it, it has been used quite a lot.
When I got it, I tried to insert a disk but it wouldn't go in. I opened up the unit and I saw that a bit of plastic was missing from a piece o springy steel. I used a zip tie to repair a zip drive. I had to grind the head of the zip tie a bit, to mimic the missing part.
Once I could insert and eject the disk I tried to read or write something but it just wouldn't recognize the disk or it would say disk drive not ready.
I cleaned and lubed with silicone grease every moving part. I lubed even the ends of the plastic "rails" onto which the heads slide. I cleaned the steel core from the coil inside. I cleaned the heads with drops of IPA and then gently moving the heads 1-2 mm back and forth in a careful way so that they will not get off the little fabric patch where they rest while the drive is not in use.
I tried to add a tiny damper made from felt so that the heads wouldn't hit violently when they would return to their initial position.
The mechanism had a lot of play in it and the tiny steel wire rail onto which the heads move / are guided, was kind of loose.
After all the trial and error I managed to read a disk and write something but that was it. It wouldn't recognize the fresh written data just the old data present on the disk. After this just click, click an the drive would become unresponsive and it wouldn't eject the disk or it would eject it after many button presses.
After I inserted a disk in 9/10 cases it would make a click sound and then would spin the disk. Sometimes it would freeze the PC, sometimes not. Sometimes the system would become laggy while I tried to read a disk.
It would recognize the size of the disk but it wouldn't perform a quick or a full format.
Sometimes it wouldn't spin up after a disk was inserted.
The IOMEGA Windows software wouldn't recognize the unit. This wasn't required as the unit can work without drivers. It doesn't need them.
I think that I exhausted all the possibilities. The heads are either damaged or decalibrated. RIP drive. I think that it is unable to detect the first track on the disk.
I gave the unit for free for the buyer of the sealed Zip 250. A father wanted the 250 for his kid who's into retro computing. I told him that maybe he will find another drive that needs the electronic part and maybe he will be able to fix it.
All in all, after 3 hours I said that's enough as I wouldn't trust this drive with my data even if I would've fixed it.
Where do you keep finding these gems?! Great find as always, by the way!
The local flea market.
After 6 years of going there I think that in a way I contributed to this situation as many sellers that didn't have PC related stuff in their inventory now bring a lot of computer hardware and from time to time I find things that I thought they were minced meat a loooonnng time ago.
