ZIP Drive drivers

[canadaboy25]

Hey I was wondering if anyone would know where to find windows drivers/software for a Panasonic JU-811T012 ZIP drive.

I have some old ZIP disks and was trying to read the data from them.

I am running Windows Vista and it recognizes that the drive is there but cant read from it.

I know that the drive is good because I used to use it on another pc until the HDD went bad.

Any help is appreciated

[Topcat]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

I've never needed a driver to operate a ZIP drive, as long as the interface worked (SCSI or IDE), the drive always worked....but I've always used Iomega....couldn't swear that to be true with a Panasonic....but if the OS sees and is able to access the drive, but its unreadable, the drive is bad or the disk is bad. Zip drives were not known for their durability.

[canadaboy25]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

So chances are that the 15 year old disks are bad?

[Topcat]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

So chances are that the 15 year old disks are bad?

If we're taking bets, I'll take that action for sure!!! Thats like asking if a 15yr old floppy is still good....but on that note, I still have some old AOL floppies (yea, they used to mail out their software on floppy disks)...I'd reformat them and use them typically as startup disks or kernel driver disks that are needed during installs for drivers that weren't embedded.

[Elysarian]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

I'm not sure I actually own a drive capable of reading a floppy any more...

I think I have a few 3.5" disks laying around someplace, probably shareware ones (or maybe re-purposed AOL ones with tape over the write-protect hole).

Thinking about it, I also had some 8" floppies with IBM system/36 operating system code on them but I think they got thrown out

When I was at college we had to hand coursework in on 5.25" disks (am I showing my age yet?)

[canadaboy25]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

Haha I had a tray of 3.5 inch floppies and about 7 of them were bad.

My first pc was an apple iie so I still have some 5.25 floppies in the basement. Surprisingly all of the ones that I tried still worked.

The Vista pc has always had trouble with older media because it just crashes when it cant read the drives right away. The only other operational pc with an IDE port that I have is a 1996 Seanix Technologies ASI 9000 running windows 95. Would Windows 95 recognize a drive like that?

[Topcat]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

The only other operational pc with an IDE port that I have is a 1996 Seanix Technologies ASI 9000 running windows 95. Would Windows 95 recognize a drive like that?

It should. I used a SCSI Zip drive with win95 and NT4 all the time, no drivers were needed. An IDE interface won't need a driver for the zip drive either.

[canadaboy25]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

I have used floppies for most of my life and just recently started using them for startup disks and stuff. It took me a fair while to remember how on earth to disable the write protect on them haha.

[canadaboy25]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

Well I'll go pull it out and see if those disks have any life left in them. (just for laughs)

[canadaboy25]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

Well it read the disk perfectly. There was a readme file so I opened it and it said "This disk was compressed using DriveSpace3, which requires Windows 95."

Well now the question is would imgburn run on windows 95 so i could put the files on a cd and copy them to my pc?

[Topcat]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

Compressing data to conserve disk space....I remember people doing that back when HDD space was at a premium...it always led to recovery messes when the system would crash.

[ratdude747]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

iomega should still have them online.

[Elysarian]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

might be easier to network the win95 machine to something newer (perhaps with a crossover cable?) and copy the files that way - assuming you could get the computers to talk to each other.

setting up an ftp server might work if ms file sharing doesn't.

[t.j.]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

what about right clicken on file an running in compatible made for 95?

[cheapie]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

I use a null modem cable to connect my old Windows 95 machine to my main (Linux) box. It's incredibly slow (even at 115200 baud) but it works.

[Elysarian]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

I use a null modem cable to connect my old Windows 95 machine to my main (Linux) box. It's incredibly slow (even at 115200 baud) but it works.

I remember doing that to copy files from one machine to another (business accounts) - IIRC I used XCopy and it took forever (about a gig of files from a 486 running windows 3.1 to a Pentium 133 machine running win95, fastest I could get the serial link to work was 28.8k reliably).

Took even longer than it should have thanks to a fellow employee accidentally releasing the bungee cord that was holding the door open which pinged across the room and actually hit the power button on the old PC (it had an AT style PSU with the old-skool proper on/off switch rather than the momentary/hold down for 4 seconds ones that ATX's have)

[lti]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

If the old computer has a network card, connecting the two through a switch or Ethernet null modem cable (I don't know what that type of cable is really called) would be the fastest.

I still have a parallel port Zip drive, which does require drivers. Windows doesn't install any automatically, and I never ran the Found New Hardware wizard to see if Windows would install a driver without the disc that came with the drive. I didn't know any of them would have built-in drivers in Windows.

[Topcat]

Re: ZIP Drive drivers

Win95 should be fine on a LAN..... Unlike modern OS's though, make sure you manually install 'client for microsoft networks', file and print sharing, and TCP/IP, as none of that crap is there by default. Remove all the unneeded crap, like IPX, and so on. You will need the trusty win95 disk if the CAB's aren't on the HDD. After that, put the machine in the same workgroup, and you should be able to access.