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Documents Zip Drive Reverse Engineering -- Episode 338
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  • Author Author: tariq.ahmad
  • Date Created: 19 Apr 2018 5:53 PM Date Created
  • Last Updated Last Updated: 13 Apr 2018 7:24 AM
  • Views 1586 views
  • Likes 10 likes
  • Comments 7 comments
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Zip Drive Reverse Engineering -- Episode 338

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Tragedy has befallen Ben Heck, once upon a time he created some awesome levels for Doom and now he wants to revisit them, but he cannot! They reside on an ancient and old media type called 'zip disks', zip drives were made by iomega and came in various sizes from 100mByte up to 1gByte. So to reverse engineer it Ben and Felix are going to find an old computer, an oscilloscope and a parallel port connected zip drive to find out how it talks to one another and make it do their bidding! What old hardware have you tried to make work? Or reverse engineered? Let us know in the comments below!

 

 

Disclaimer

  • small computer serial interface
  • tektronix
  • retro hardware
  • iomega
  • iomega zip drive
  • oscilloscope
  • scsi
  • reverse engineering
  • parallel
  • iomega zip disk
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Top Comments

  • Workshopshed
    Workshopshed over 7 years ago +2
    I've got an old LCD that I quite fancy getting working at some point, I found the data sheet for the chips on the back so it's just a case of getting something like an Arduino Mega with lots of digital…
  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 7 years ago +1
    Zip drives were common a while back. Unfortunately they had a flaw, and if a zip disk had a flaw, it would destroy the drive heads.. This in turn would kill the other zip drives that were inserted. Good…
  • ntewinkel
    ntewinkel over 7 years ago in reply to mcb1 +1
    We had a zip drive back in the day. I might still have one of the disks. Those suckers were expensive. We quickly switched to CDRWs when those became available. And I agree, I think I would have simply…
  • Workshopshed
    Workshopshed over 7 years ago

    I've got an old LCD that I quite fancy getting working at some point, I found the data sheet for the chips on the back so it's just a case of getting something like an Arduino Mega with lots of digital pins so I can see if I can control it.

    imageimageimage

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  • cmdshft4
    cmdshft4 over 7 years ago

    I have a SCSI Zip drive and a cool transparent plastic USB version that I found at a yard sale. Both still work, which is handy with my retro Mac setups.

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  • ninjatrent
    ninjatrent over 7 years ago

    Watched and commenting on this episode from the Raspberry Pi 3 + and Pi Touchscreen.

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    Using Chromium Browser. Scrot for screen capture.

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    My favorite show!

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    Another awesome episode.

     

    Trent

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  • ntewinkel
    ntewinkel over 7 years ago in reply to DAB

    I think we all need an old 486 with various arrays of floppy drives and zip drives, just for times like that.

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  • DAB
    DAB over 7 years ago

    Nice episode,

     

    My wife just asked me a couple a weeks ago if we still had a Zip reader.

    Luckily I salvaged a couple of  IDE drives from some desktop computers I donated.

     

    Now I have to hook it up and get it working.

     

    DAB

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  • ntewinkel
    ntewinkel over 7 years ago in reply to mcb1

    We had a zip drive back in the day. I might still have one of the disks. Those suckers were expensive. We quickly switched to CDRWs when those became available.

     

    And I agree, I think I would have simply hung the drive and disk on the wall with a museum plaque by it - all that figuring out went so high and fast over my head I nearly got a nosebleed image

     

    -Nico

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  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 7 years ago

    Zip drives were common a while back.

    Unfortunately they had a flaw, and if a zip disk had a flaw, it would destroy the drive heads..

    This in turn would kill the other zip drives that were inserted.

     

    Good luck.

    I think he should reside to the fact his doom scores are lost in the great 1's and 0's heaven, just like a radio transmission.

     

    Mark

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