VOGONS

Fun fact

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First post, by xjas

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External Iomega Jaz drives are actually 3.5" internal drives in a fancy housing with an integrated HD50 adapter.

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This is useful to know if, like me, you lack the Jaz's 5-pin mini-DIN PSU, but want to use the drive anyway. Open it up and it's a bog standard 50-pin SCSI & MOLEX power cable.

Finally I was able to read my one and only Jaz cart.

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I don't know what makes these tools "asian", but I was happily able to recover this gem:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/666nivjckezqx8c/INTRO.MOV?dl=0

...which as far as I can tell is on Archive.org but not on Youtube or anywhere else on the web. So if you need that one Gold Nugget of Original Content for your Retro-Tech!(tm) channel, here you go. 😜

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(^^ This video is only from 1997!)

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 1 of 4, by luckybob

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This is actually more common than you think. Backpack drives did this, and LS-120 drives too, but they had a different face plate.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 2 of 4, by spiroyster

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External hard drives are also a popular incarnation of this kind of behaviour.

Reply 3 of 4, by torindkflt

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Also common with external (non-slimline) optical drives. Recently disassembled an external Firewire DVD burner from an old eMac system my brother gave me and pulled a standard IDE drive from it to add to my spare. It's often cheaper for them to just build an adapter and housing for existing models of internal drive than it is to redesign an entire new model of drive solely for external use.

Reply 4 of 4, by xjas

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Yeah I get why on external HDDs/CDs/DVDs, especially into the USB/FW era, but was expecting Jaz drives to be different as a single company developed the tech and made the whole thing - drive, enclosure, media, etc. Hell, I didn't even know they made an internal Jaz drive until I looked it up just now - but I guess they actually never made an *external* one. 😜

If you are easily amused & not offended by vulgarity, google iomega "asian tools" (with quotes.) The results (all seven of them) get funnier towards the end.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

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