I went through my little box of internal ZIP drives and none appear to be the ATA ones. I do have a single ZIP 100 SCSI though and I never really bought many internal drives as I tried to concentrate on the 250MB models and I already had plenty external ones.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Taken from here: http://pw2.netcom.com/~deepone/zipjaz/atapi.html

There are at least four different kinds of IDE Zip drives - the original ATA version, the ATAPI version which replaced it, an AT […]
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There are at least four different kinds of IDE Zip drives - the original ATA version, the ATAPI version which replaced it, an ATAPI2 version which seems to have replaced the original ATAPI Zip, and an ATAPI3 version which will probably replace the ATAPI2 . The various types of IDE Zip drives can be differentiated in the following ways:

The ATA Zip has a separate access light and eject button in addition to a manual eject hook on the front of the drive. All ATAPI Zip's have an eject button which doubles as the access light, and they lack the manual eject hook (they have a hole in the back of the drive for this purpose, so you would have to open up the computer to use it).

The firmware revisions for the ATA Zip are in the form of B.29 (letter before number). For the ATAPI Zip drives, they should be in the form of 23.D or 14.A (number before letter). In Windows 9x, the firmware revision can be found on the Properties/Settings tab for the Zip drive in the Disk drives section of Device Manager.

To identify an ATAPI2 or ATAPI3 Zip drive, view the label on top of the drive. Beneath the diagram of jumper settings, you should see a part number which begins with P/N. Following that number, it will say ATAPI2 or ATAPI3 if it is one (and if it's an ATAPI2, it may not show all of the available jumper settings on that diagram).

Note that different types of IDE Zip drives use different jumper settings, so it's important to know which type you have.

My experience is with the ATAPI drives, but I think most of this information would also apply to the older ATA drive.

I think you can download the manuals for the original ATAPI Zip drive from Iomega.

The manuals for the ATA Zip seem to have been removed from Iomega's website. I think the main difference in configuration is the jumper settings, so I've included the relevant illustration from Iomega's PDF file here.

The ATAPI2 Zip has some special configuration issues - especially when it's set for drive A: mode. You can find some ATAPI2-specific information here.

I'm told that the ATAPI3 Zip no longer supports drive A: mode as the ATAPI2 model did. Apparently, Iomega decided that it was more trouble than it was worth.

Damn, you made me get my little box of ZIP drives again 🤣!

Anyway, here's what mine say:
Model: Z100ATAPI ZIP CODE:23D (no ATAPI2/ATAPI3 thingy where it should've been) date: 01/02 (this drive is weird 🤣)
Model: Z100ATAPI CODE: 03H ATAPI3 date: 11/26/1999
Model: Z250ATAPI CODE: 42S ATAPI-250 date: 10/09/2002
Model: Z250ATAPI CODE: 41S ATAPI-250 date: 03-17-2001
Model: Z100Si ZIP CODE: E08 SCSI date: 08/25
Model: Z250ATAPI CODE: 42S ATAPI-250 date: 11/21/2002
Model: Z100ATAPI ZIP CODE: 12A ATAPI2 date: 11/11
Model: Z100ATAPI CODE: 03H ATAPI3 date: 07/25/2000

Got 1 more but this one was CoD 🤣 so it's not in this box anymore

Very interesting! I just unpacked one I bought which says the model is "Z100iDE ZIP" P/N: 02865D02. It also says elsewhere "Rev. A00" which is Dell revision numbering, and has a "DP/N" (Dell part number) of 00059404 so I guess this is a drive OEM'd to Dell. Not sure what date it is - the only thing close to a date is "02-08/17-23:47" which could be 17 August 2002 I guess?

@Tetrium: You sure do have plenty of ZIP drives! I only have (now) three!

sorry to be completely naiive but.. what does it matter if its ATA vs ATAPI?? what difference does this make?
does this affect compatibility? performance? bootability?

Tetrium wrote:

hyoenmadan wrote:

@chinny22, keropi: As far as i see, OP wasn't asking for alternatives or suggestions about buying hardware that he clearly doesn't need. He was asking about Zip drive speed in an 386 machine, if was possible this configuration at all.
I don't get why people does this at all. Not only deviates the whole thread, is also annoying.

ChrisNova777 mentioned any difference between IDE and SCSI ZIP and that it was 21 years ago since he last used them.
So either he actually already has a stash he never used or he doesn't have anything ZIP related and wants us to tell him whether IDE or SCSI ZIP (or possibly something else) can be used more effectively instead of those tedious floppy disks (he mentions "tedious" instead of "ZIP drive speed" btw).

i have a SCSI external zip100plus and i have/had numerous internal zip drives as they came standard with mac g3/g4's from around 1999-2000.
i dont have an internal zip SCSI i was just curious if there was a performance difference because i remember back then SCSI had a higher price point which seemed to indicate a higher performance?

i had a parallel zip drive years + years + years ago back in the windows 95/98 days but who knows what happened to it. my mom probably threw it out years ago when i moved out. 20 yeras ago is ancient history.
i threw out a stack of internal zip100's about 5 of them a few yeras ago thinking id never see one again but here i am using them again :0

chrisNova777 wrote:

sorry to be completely naiive but.. what does it matter if its ATA vs ATAPI?? what difference does this make?
does this affect compatibility? performance? bootability?

The Wikipedia article on ATAPI has a good explanation.
Basically "true" ATA/IDE devices are hard disks. ATAPI is another protocol on the same physical interface. ATAPI devices (most common ones are CD/DVD drives) are only bootable when the BIOS supports it. They only work in DOS when you load drivers (unless you rely on the emulation provided by the boot support from the BIOS). Windows 9x should already include drivers.
A true ATA/IDE Zip drive should be bootable and work in DOS on most PC's, so it would be quite useful for a 386. Just swap in a bootable disk with DOS and Windows 3.x, 100MB is plenty for that. (Transfer rate is about period correct for a 386, access time is probably higher.)
There shouldn't be a difference in performance, ATAPI devices can theoretically use all DMA modes. The ATAPI Zip drives only support PIO, but I suppose the IDE Zip drives are not better in that respect. Since a Zip drive only delivers something like 600kB/s that doesn't matter too much, though.

I can confirm that according to Ontrack (which I am installing for unrelated reasons) it shows my IDE Zip drive as a 100MB hard drive that does not support any DMA modes, and it doesn't even support LBA.

One limitation of the ATA Zip drive - you can't install DOS unless there's a Zip disk in the drive, otherwise it insists your hard drive D: needs to be formatted otherwise DOS can't see it, and there's no way to skip the format.

Also it looks like you have to boot DOS with a disk in the drive to get it assigned to D: (for example) otherwise if there's no disk no drive letter gets assigned, so you have to reboot should you later insert a disk.

I guess this is why they changed to ATAPI, since making the Zip drive look more like a CD as opposed to a hard disk seems to get better support for removable devices under DOS.

At least the ATA drive is bootable, but then my 486 BIOS only supports booting from the first hard drive so if I have a HDD then I can't boot from the Zip disk anyway without extra utilities, so even that's of limited use with older machines!

chrisNova777 wrote:

sorry to be completely naiive but.. what does it matter if its ATA vs ATAPI?? what difference does this make?
does this affect compatibility? performance? bootability?

There are many quirks about, but basically, ATA derives from old IDE protocol, and was designed for hard disk use only, while ATAPI is basically SCSI command protocol over ATA, and is used to port all the devices previously available only to SCSI, like Optical drives, removable magnetic media and tapes, to ATA interface. More about this in Wikipedia.

ATA devices should work even with the most basic and older ATA chipsets like CMD families (although in pio mode) and them will report themselves as Hard Disk drives, while ATAPI requires chip support and drivers, or BIOS support if you want to boot from these drives, and them will report themselves as how them are (Optical drives, tapes, removable media, scanners, etc).

im holding in my hand a ZIP 100 drive.. that i thought was IDE.. says its made by NEC
but it has the exact label as the other pic posted earlier in this thread..
installing an internal IDE zip drive in a 386?

the drive currently has no switches on the jumpers so its set to "SLAVE" currrently if i were to connec it

i dont really understand how he ascertained that the drive is ATAPI - it doesnt say anything about ATAPI on the label?

but if it is ATAPI.. does that mean that i can connect the zip 100 internal drive to a FloppyMax controller from Promise?
that is normally meant for an LS-120 drive?
http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/index.php/ … 03.html#msg5703

FLOPPYMAX: Bootable ATAPI Controller For LS-120 Drives […]
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FLOPPYMAX:
Bootable ATAPI Controller For LS-120 Drives

Promise Technology introduces the world's first bootable ATAPI controller for LS-120 drives (O.R. Technology's "a:drive™"). Now users can simply replace an existing 3.5" floppy drive with an LS-120 drive or add it as a second floppy to support LS-120 media (Imation's 120MB diskettes). It boots DOS for Windows 3.1x and DOS 5.x from 1.44MB/720KB floppies and boots to a DOS prompt under Windows 95 using a 120MB floppy.

FLOPPYMAX- Supports 120MB, 1.44, 720KB media
- Boots to DOS with 1.44 or 720MB diskettes
- Boots to a DOS prompt under Windows 95 from 120 MB media.*
- Assigns LS-120 drive as A or B** drive
- Replaces conventional 3.5" floppy drive with full backward compatibility
- Uses independent IDE/ATAPI device channel for conflict-free installation
- Easy installation with no software drivers
- Supports up to two LS-120 drives
- Works in PC-compatibles with a 16-bit ISA slot
- Supports DOS 5.0 and above, Windows 3.1x, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows NT 3.51 with Service Pack 5, Windows 4.0 and Windows 95

* Requires already installed Windows 95.
** If system is not equipped with floppy, LS-120 drive will be treated as floppy A;
if system is eqipped with one floppy drive, LS-120 drive will be treated as floppy drive B

could this card be used to attach both a CDROM? aswell as a ZIP 100? simultaneously? on one dual IDE/ATAPI Cable?
or would those two devices conflict with each other?

or would i need one of these instead:
because it has two seperate IDE ports?
not sure if they each support 1 or 2 devices?
hmm actualy the documentation here says it can support 4 hard drives.. not sure if that applies also to ATAPI devices? but im going to guess that it could run 4 CDroms or a combo of cdroms + zip drives/ls-120 drives
http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/index.php/ … pic,4598.0.html

trying to get the sbide.sys to work.. it doesnt detect my drive so im trying other cdr drives i have trying hopefully to find one that works

these are the options im given in the install.exe app (i downloaded from vogons?)

CREATIVE CR-521, CR-523 or CR-563
SONY CDU31A or CDU33A
MITSUMI CRMC LU005S
MITSUMI CRMC FX001 or CRMC FX001D

what do i pick?
whats going to be compatible ?
i have a samsung cdrw drive
i have a yamaha cdrw drive
i have a bunch of different make drives but they are all from 1999-2003 time frame i thnk

do i need to find a really shitty old cdrom to make this work?>

I had an ATA ZIP Drive in my 286 that's in the "Retro Activity" thread, I'm with the others on here on using something else because ZIP Drives and the disks for them are not as plentiful anymore. I just upgraded my 286 to SCSI, put a CD-ROM in there, and be done with it (of course it's also networked as well). That said, I have the 286 compatible driver and will be putting a readme with it on how to install when I upload to my website.

With a 386 there are a LOT more options than a 286...

- Windows For Workgroups 3.11 (I use this myself on anything 386 or higher)
- Microsoft LAN Manager 2.2c for DOS (does not need a bunch of extra crap to create shares and make a P2P Server)
- Mike Chambers mTCP Suite to use PC as an FTP (that's how I have my Tandy 1000 setup)
- You can also use another retro machine to host files and use MS Network Client 3.0 - which is how I got the drivers on the 286 yesterday, the 486 hosted them under Win95
- If you have some wacky old CD-ROM drives from the early 90's an a SoundBlaster with an accomodating connector, you can use that as well (Sony/Mitsumi/SCSI/IDE)

Funny anecdote, I once put an IDE HDD on a SoundBlaster AWE32 IDE port - Windows 95 actually picked it up at correct CHS/Capacity, 🤣.

Plus a 386 with IDE will easily take a CD/DVD-ROM/RW drive with the standard driver with little-no issues so there's always burning a CD of everything for backup purposes and then copying/installing from CD as well (why I added to my 286 TBH).

i found a CR-584-B from december 1996
maybe this is a better bet? and choose creative?

i dont have a SCSI internal drive..
i do have an external SCSI cdrom but i use that for my akai sampler

chrisNova777 wrote:

i found a CR-584-B from december 1996 maybe this is a better bet? and choose creative? […]
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i found a CR-584-B from december 1996
maybe this is a better bet? and choose creative?

i dont have a SCSI internal drive..
i do have an external SCSI cdrom but i use that for my akai sampler

CR-584B from 1996 is IDE (looked at a picture of one on Google) - that will indeed work, just need to make sure if it's sharing IDE channels with the hard disk the disk is set to Master and the CD-ROM to Slave - most 386 only have one IDE port. OAKCDROM.SYS or some other generic driver should get it working as well under DOS with MSCDEX.EXE

ok i just realized its a MAtUSHITA CDROM
MATSUSHITA IDE CD-ROM DRIVE CR-584-B

similar code for the cd as the creative models?

the drive is connected to the AWE32!!! not the i/o controller
i can try it on the i/o controller tho with this new drive maybe it will work

creepingnet wrote:

- Mike Chambers mTCP Suite to use PC as an FTP (that's how I have my Tandy 1000 setup)

Err, that should be "Mike Brutman's mTCP Suite ... I wrote it. 😀

mbbrutman wrote:

creepingnet wrote:

- Mike Chambers mTCP Suite to use PC as an FTP (that's how I have my Tandy 1000 setup)

Err, that should be "Mike Brutman's mTCP Suite ... I wrote it. 😀

YIKES, I always get those two confused. Sorry for the mixup.

so if the zip100 internal drive is atapi.. does that mean that it should work on anything that can host a cdrom?
such as the ide interface port on my sb32 pnp card? or any other IDE ISA adapter that supports ATAPI? (1993+)

If you have the ATA version you won't need drivers, if you have the ATAPI version you need to install the Iomega ZIP drivers. ATAPI is just a communication protocol. CD drives use it, but it's not *for* CD drives. DOS doesn't support ATAPI devices natively, so for CD drives you need a CD ATAPI driver and for ZIP drives you need a ZIP ATAPI driver. SBIDE.SYS, OAKCDROM.SYS, etc. are ATAPI drivers that only support CD drives, so they of course won't work with a ZIP drive. You can still download the ZIP ATAPI driver easily enough (I think I even got it from the Iomega website a few months ago as the DOS or Win9x driver download.)

Any IDE interface can support ATAPI as it's just a way of encoding commands over the IDE bus, so you don't need a special ATAPI IDE controller, any IDE controller will work.

If your IDE interface is on a PnP card as you suggest then the only trick is to make sure the PnP drivers load before the ZIP drivers. The IDE interface isn't visible to the system until the PnP drivers have loaded and assigned it some resources. So if you load the ZIP ATAPI drivers first they'll just complain that no ZIP drives can be found.

I had an issue with my SB PnP card (forget which model now) but it could not be set as the third IDE channel. I had two on the motherboard so I wanted the card to be the third, but it wouldn't work. In the end I realised I was able to set it to the fourth IDE channel, and everything worked fine just having IDE channels 1, 2 and 4, with no IDE 3. So if you get PnP errors, just try configuring it as another IDE channel.

If anyone is thinking about getting an ATA ZIP drive to avoid the need for drivers, I'd recommend avoiding it. The 486/DOS6.22 system I tested mine with was unable to correctly detect when a disk had been replaced, so trying to access a disk would show files from the previous disk, and writing them tended to corrupt the disk. The ATAPI version (with drivers) in the same system worked fine. I imagine this is why the ATA versions seemed to only come from Dell PCs (which presumably had extra BIOS support for them) and everyone else had ATAPI drives.

chrisNova777 wrote:

but it has the exact label as the other pic posted earlier in this thread..
installing an internal IDE zip drive in a 386?

i dont really understand how he ascertained that the drive is ATAPI - it doesnt say anything about ATAPI on the label?

It sure does, look at the model number: Z100ATAPI2. The ATA versions say Z100iDE.

Malvineous wrote:

If anyone is thinking about getting an ATA ZIP drive to avoid the need for drivers, I'd recommend avoiding it. The 486/DOS6.22 system I tested mine with was unable to correctly detect when a disk had been replaced, so trying to access a disk would show files from the previous disk, and writing them tended to corrupt the disk.

Natural. ATA/IDE isn't SCSI, it doesn't have enough features to support hotswap operations in both hardware and software levels. Once booted, you aren't allowed to exchange media during the whole session. That's where ATAPI comes on save, being essentially SCSI over ATA/IDE, and allowing the full range of operation full SCSI drives allows. Generally, when you boot from an ATA ZIP drive, it will enter in a locked state where you can't eject the media until you power down the machine, or reboot it to BIOS BootMenu in order to boot from a different disk. I dunno why that didn't happened in your case.

Actually now that you mention it, I think it did lock the disk in. The drive was in unknown condition so I think (rather embarrassingly) I assumed the eject mechanism must be broken so I was using the emergency eject hole to get the disk out. If you say the disk gets locked in until reboot then the behaviour of that drive suddenly makes a whole lot more sense! I think I could eject it just after a reboot which I found odd, but now suddenly it all falls into place - thanks for the clarification!

Makes me now wonder whether you can load drivers for an ATA ZIP drive and restore full functionality on it, in DOS mode.