Talk:Zip drive

Jaz

-To Fyrefiend: The Jaz Drive link, IMO, should be in the Zip See Also. The Jaz Drive existed around the same time as the Zip drive, was made by the same manufacturer, was also a magnetic removable media, and shared market share and marketing strategies at the time of its existance. Tell me what you think, but I think that the removal should be RVed. --Borisborf 06:45, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Look at the actual article and not just the diff of his edit. He only removed a duplicate. Look more carefully at your version from [1]. - Keith D. Tyler [flame]

Sorry about that. I was very tired and likely didn't see that it was already in there. I'll be more careful in the future.--Borisborf 21:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ZipPlus

Wouldn't the SCSI connector just shortcircut the PPA3 (SCSI-Parallel converter) chip found in ordinary ZIP drives? And can we get a source on the compatability problems? Thanks. ~Netdroid9

The zip plus offered both paralell and scsi through the same physcial port with automatic detection of which was in use. I don't have any sources to hand (its been mentioned in at least one major british computing magazine though, i think the magazine was "personal computer world" but i can't easilly get you an issue number). Plugwash 17:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)I do not know what to do about this topic,and what is the speed of a Zip Disc?[[[Link title]]]

A large number of Voting Machines in use by American States still use 2000-era Zip disks.

The machines are actually that old, most having been purchased after the 2000 Bush-vs-Gore election troubles with punch-cards.

That'd be a neat trick, given that the Parallel ones I've seen never had any kind of SCSI device ID DIP switches or provision for termination (internal or external). Their manufacturing was made easier by typical external low-speed SCSI stuff already using the same 25-pin female D-sub ports as (non centronics) Parallel did, but it doesn't necessarily mean they were compatible... 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

It was a neat trick, but the magic was in the supplied parallel connection cable. Although the Zip plus could be connected to a SCSI port using a standard SCSI lead, the same was not true when connecting to a parallel port. It only worked with the supplied parallel cable. 86.176.156.193 (talk) 08:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

References

unpopularity or complete obsolescence?

In the first paragraph, it states that the ZIP drive has faded from popularity. wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it has disappeared almost entirely? 68.228.111.250 17:52, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily... I still see them around quite often. Just because they are there and aren't used doesn't mean that the Zip drive has disappeared almost entirely. I know a few pathology labs that still store old stacks of slides on Zip disks and many schools still include them in their machines.--Borisborf 02:57, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'd say that they have become obsolete because you can't buy them in local stores like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, etc. I'd say that makes them specialty items that you have to special order because they are obsolete. -- Suso 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Does anybody know how the transfer rate for the 250MB Zip drive compares to the 1GB Hi-MD MiniDisk? I like the cost and size of the Hi-MD much better, but I'm sure the transfer rate is going to have to be much slower because it just doesn't spin very fast.KJ-386 19:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

-blink- -blink- ... someone asked this in 2007? I'm a diehard for old kit, but even I had long since moved on from the idea of using HiMDs as storage media by then - a 1Gb USB key was about as cheap as a (rare as hen's teeth - I generally had to settle for reformatted 74 minute ones) HiMD disc, let alone the player, cable and battery needed to read it. Sturdier, too. Incidentally, the transfer rate IIRC was something like 2x - 4x CD speed (limited by the HiMD hardware), pretty dismal and slower than any kind of Zip, but all they needed to make it seem perfectly fast for someone dropping a few 64kbit ATRACs or 128kbit MP3s onto it from Soundstage (scale speed of 18 ~ 75x playback) and far quicker than MD-Data. 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:46, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The question I had reading the article, which wasn't answered, is: Does Iomega still make any? If so, how many? If not, when did they stop? I haven't had a drive on my computer since earlier in this decade, but there have to be some people who still have them and use them. Remember, eight-track cartridges were still made and sold (via the mail) to diehards until 1988, and Sony only stopped making DAT machines two years ago. Technologies, even when clearly obsolete, still have a longer terminal period than most people realize. Daniel Case 02:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

To at least partially answer my own question, the company does still offer them for sale on its website.[2]. I don't think they sell in retail stores anymore, however. Daniel Case 03:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw the 100MB and 250MB USB-powered drives for sale recently at a Staples store in NC. Of course, sales (or lack thereof) reveal nothing about how many old drives are still in regular use. I just recently connected my first USB 250MB drive (w/ separate power supply) to its third computer. The drive gets used for about fifteen seconds a day, backing up financial data files of less than 10MB total size. It may very well outlast three more computers, but its performance and utility won't put another dime in Iomega's pocket. I have never worn out a Zip disk either, which means that I haven't needed to buy one in years. KJ-386 16:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I just bought a brand new Zip drive and three disks yesterday at Office Depot, so they're still out there. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 00:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

In heaven's name, why? I can understand needing to shift some stuff off old archive discs, or transfer things to a crufty legacy machine that still uses them, but a brand new drive and three brand new discs? eBay perhaps? And just one disc? Take the 300mb (or 750, or 2250) of storage you've got there and put it next to a few CDRs, or a single DVDR, or one (4gb) or two (2gb) USB memory sticks....

I've just found a Zip drive along with some old hardware. Any suggestions as to what to do with it? Paperweight, perhaps? — Chameleon 08:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

eBay, mate! Maybe sell it to ACupOfCoffee... There'll be someone out there who's just found a stack of old archives on Zip and wants to transfer them to a more up to date medium, but doesn't have a working drive any more. That's assuming yours works OK of course - remember that clickdeath is CONTAGIOUS. 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

They still have some uses in computer audio and music : some recorders, synthesisers and samplers use them. Or XD-cards or SmartMedia or floppies ! That will persist for quite a while. --195.137.93.171 (talk) 23:33, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Interface

I've never used a Zip drive and therefore know nothing of its interface. Will someone with information on the interface please update the article?--Fermin (talk) 22:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

In MS Windows, zip drives can be accessed through Windows Explorer: the OS assigns them a drive letter, if this is what you're asking. - Measure for Measure 14 March 2008

This is one thing that's at least fairly accurate in the article. You had a choice of them... kicking off with a Mac/Unix SCSI and a DOS/Windows/universal Parallel external models, then expanding into SCSI and ATAPI internal units, before ending up as USB. What I find wierdest are the 250mb USB1.1 type, as they'd surely peak at a lower speed than even the 100mb parallel ones could manage. In all cases, so long as you had the appropriate socket on your machine, you just plugged it in and installed a simple low footprint driver or (for external drives) ran a miniscule TSR connection program to give you a drive letter, and optionally a speed optimiser. 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

"Easter Eggs"

Are you sure its including the Z100USB model? Because I used to use one (the big blue, clear-cased version) and I remember CLEARLY that this does not happen (the morse code flashing) when the USB connection is unplugged AND powered on. Please correct me if I'm wrong or I guess you have the wrong model. There are a few Z100USB variants as stated here. Someone please review this as I have never seen this happening on other externally powered USB versions (the Z250USBPCM for instance). --Debug-GED 03:39, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Debug-GED (talk • contribs)

Requesting clarification

Would someone mind clarifying what is meant by "the USB Zip 250 has an external ATAPI connection that is rarely used"? — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 04:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

dunno mate... there seems to be a great deal of questionable information in this article. Why in the world would they even include something like that? 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:29, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a Zip 250 USB (not USB powered) which has a large, multi-pin connector on its back end. I've no idea what it's for. Bizzybody (talk) 03:24, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Iomega made PCMCIA and Firewire adapters for the externally powered Zip 250. Either one also provided power to the drive. Firewire required a 6-pin port. The PCMCIA adapter was a connector on a cable, attached to the card. The Firewire adapter was in a housing that fit onto the rear of the drive and covered almost the whole back end. http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/zip2u/inst_drive_pcm.html http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/firewire/get_start.html Mystery solved! Now the info needs put into the article.Bizzybody (talk) 03:52, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Power Supply Specifications

I don't suppose anyone knows the Power supply requirements for a Zip 100 Drive? Had a clear out, found an Zip 100 & no PSU. EDIT: Just acquired one, output is +5 Volts @ 1.0 Ampres —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.25.193.117 (talk) 19:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It would be good to list the power spec. on here anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.25.193.117 (talk) 18:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

omissions and inaccuracies

As a long time back in the day user of this stuff, anyone mind if I give this a good old fashioned country clean-up? There's NO mention of the 25mb disks it launched with, for a start, the speed estimate for floppies is crazy, and a few other things are off kilter... 193.63.174.10 (talk) 13:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

There's still that claim that floppies run at 500kbit/s there, which I've tried to moderate. Possibly you've been the victim of the same floppy-evangelist lunatic that some of my edits on the actual floppy disc page were attacked by. Apparently mentioning that 500kbit is merely the burst bitrate post-MFM-encoding and is neither sustainable beyond the length of a single sector (or in some cases a single track, but still with a processing delay between tracks that drags the speed down), nor actually directly relevant to the system bus side signalling (which can end up averaging a mere quarter of the MFM burst rate) is "untrue and irrelevant". Yeah, because giving the impression that DSHDs can sustain transfers at more than a third the speed of CDROM (when actually you'd be lucky to stream a 128k MP3 from one without at least a few k's of prebuffering) is honest and justifiable... right... 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:39, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

U don't need permission so just go ahead, but please be accurate. The ZIP drive was launched with 100 MB cartridges (I'm looking at a copy of the Iomega Oct 24, 1994 press release). An earlier Floptical product was 21 MB but it has nothing to do with ZIP other than they were both Iomega products. FWIW, Iomega is already an article, so IMHO there is no need in this article to cover Floptical. Tom94022 (talk) 17:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The 100Mb Zip drive officially reads and writes to both 100Mb and 25Mb media (it says so in the manual). Whether 25Mb discs were actually released for sale is another matter. 86.176.156.193 (talk) 08:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I was around back then, and I distinctly remember 25MB Zip disks. You're correct that the launch capacity for the format was 100MB; 25MB disks appeared later as a low-cost option, probably in an effort to compete with the ease with which standard floppies could be given away without concern for the cost.

I never bought Zip, but I did buy the competitor SuperDisk because unlike Zip it also sped up standard floppy read/write by 5X. But I always wished SuperDisk would come out with a low-capacity disk to compete with the cheap 25MB Zip disk. They never did; for SuperDisk it was just the launch format of 120MB and then 240MB. Greg Lovern (talk) 06:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

How many physical sectors (exactly) are on the medium?

Anybody knows this for the 3 types of media? --RokerHRO (talk) 12:34, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I found [3]. Can anyone verify these values? Esp. the different disk geometry values scares me. How does the partition table entries look on the pre-formated media? --RokerHRO (talk) 12:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd be interested to know this sort of data as well, particularly if it's (hard?) sectored with a GCR/etc type of variable sector per track scheme. Ben Heck was doing some analysis of signals going back and forth between a computer and a parallel Zip drive (...seemingly not being bothered about doing any online research first, which would have yelled "it's a SCSI device with a built in parallel adaptor, and an ATAPI style driver that sends SCSI commands down the parallel cable", which he sort of almost but not quite managed to figure out from sticking a logic analyser on the cable then poring through the driver source), and seeing something that looked like it might be a certain number of 512-byte sectors per second, but it was unclear. Knowing the sector structure and the rpm would certainly help on that front, though there's probably quite a lot of buffering between the cable and the actual media anyway. 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:34, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Poorly written

This article needs to be given a thorough once-through to remove the incorrect of "they", "them", "their", etc. that can't apply to an un-living object. Unless ZIP disks start to get together and develop awareness like The Terminator or Agent Smith, I must criticize this article as inaccurate and hard-to-read, or also unable to be read and understood from a proper perspective. Japanimation station (talk) 05:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe there is any such prohibition in the English language, as for example, "I have two cars, they are both green." is perfectly acceptable usage. Tom94022 (talk) 05:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Heck, I'd love to hear what their suggestion would be for the plural of "it"... 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:00, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Capacity

"...nor could ever match the storage size available on rewritable CDs..." The Zip 750 held more than what has become the de-facto standard 80 minute / 703 megabyte CD-R/RW capacity. Bizzybody (talk) 03:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever even seen 750mb Zipdisks for sale, they seem about as imaginary as the 25mb ones. If we consider the much more common 100 and 250mb ones, they're decidedly below what any CDR other than maybe the 8cm miniatures (and perhaps the credit-card shaped types?) had to offer. 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:02, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Large connector on USB Zip 250

What's the large connector for on the back of the USB (not USB powered!) Zip 250? It looks like it's made for some sort of adapter to snap onto. Bizzybody (talk) 03:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

It's an ATAPI interface. This information is in the article. 86.176.156.193 (talk) 08:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Iomega made PCMCIA and Firewire adapters for the externally powered Zip 250. Either one also provided power to the drive. Firewire required a 6-pin port. The PCMCIA adapter was a connector on a cable, attached to the card. The Firewire adapter was in a housing that fit onto the rear of the drive and covered almost the whole back end. http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/zip2u/inst_drive_pcm.html http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/firewire/get_start.html Mystery solved! Now the info needs put into the article. Bizzybody (talk) 03:54, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

More information and performance tests of the Zip 250 using different connections, VS a floppy drive and the Zip 250 SCSI. Firewire is significantly faster than the drive's built in USB while only slightly slower than the SCSI version. It doesn't say what the Zip 250 // is by the green bar. Is the PCMCIA card SCSI??? http://www.activewin.com/reviews/hardware/zip/zip250usb/features.shtml Bizzybody (talk) 04:48, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

First model internal SCSI Zip 100

The first model of the internal SCSI Zip 100 required a 5.25" half-height drive bay. Model Z100Si. Its circuit board was wider than the drive mechanism. It had a blue faceplate the same color as the external versions. It only supported SCSI ID 5 and 6, like the external version. Power connector was the same as for 3.5" floppy. I still have one, looking at it right now. My guess is this model was essentially the same as a prototype, rushed into production, with the external SCSI version a "shrink" to pack everything onto the smaller case. The 3.5" bay version soon followed and the 5.25" 'widebody' was discontinued. Front and top pics of this oddball drive at my Flickr page. Feel free to grab them for the article. http://www.flickr.com/photos/27748767@N08/ Bizzybody (talk) 04:29, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

IDE or ATAPI, how to tell the difference.

The internal Zip 100 came in three interfaces, SCSI in both 3.5" and 5.25" (see my Flickr page above for pics of the 5.25"), IDE and ATAPI, both only in 3.5". The IDE version has a black eject button with the activity LED beside it and an emergency eject pull rod slightly recessed at the upper left corner of the faceplate. The eject rod may be blocked by some 5.25" mounting brackets or computer case front plates with openings too small for installing the drive from the front/outside. The ATAPI version has a clear eject button the activity LED shines through and emergency eject is via pushing a pin or wire into a tiny hole on the back of the housing. Any emergency had better be a slow one because the computer has to be opened up to get at the eject hole. ;) Bizzybody (talk) 04:40, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I could have sworn that ATAPI was simply an adaption of the IDE standard for removable drives (which it otherwise doesn't properly support). Are you sure you're not just looking at two different revisions of the same thing? How do they differ in performance / drivers / connectivity / compatibility with different computers, if at all?

Update: it seems that ATAPI literally is "how you connect a removable-media drive to an IDE interface". Also, such devices are essentially SCSI models with a SCSI-to-IDE bridge installed, which would make a great deal of sense both for early CDROMs, and most particularly the Zip, which in most extant versions is a SCSI device at heart just with optional converters bolted on. So I would expect whether your Zip is "IDE" or "ATAPI" is just a matter of labelling - inside, it's probably the exact same SCSI-originated hardware, and the driver will still speak SCSI commands to it, just maybe some people wouldn't buy an "ATAPI" device for their "IDE" computer, because, well, it's the "wrong" protocol, innit... same as how you would find CD drives called either IDE, ATA, or ATAPI depending on who wrote the sales listing.

To whit: ATA Packet Interface 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

The article needs click of death damage pictures.

Pictures of a torn disk edge, taken with the slide held open, and a drive with the heads ripped from their actuator arms would be useful illustrations of the cause of click of death and drive damage caused by damaged disks, and an explanation of the "contagion" of click of death caused by a damaged disk ripping heads loose then the ruined drive damaging good disks, which can then destroy other good drives. I saw several of both when I worked at a computer shop, but never took pictures. Bizzybody (talk) 04:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Probably better placed in Click_of_death article which is already linked from this article. Tom94022 (talk) 17:46, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Is new Popular Culture Section Notable

I don't think the new Popular Culture section is particularly notable and suggest it be stricken. Any comments? Tom94022 (talk) 04:39, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Zip Stickers

I've added some data back about the Zip stickers that shipped with most drives. I still have my original sheet which I could easily photograph if anyone would find it useful. I also found a source to support the information (verified and added to page). This is perhaps a bit of trivia, but it was part of the overall Zip experience that made the drives unique, thus I feel it warrants being added. Costner (talk) 19:02, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I do recall Iomega's very successful "I am ..." campaign which included far more that just stickers - buttons, ad's, etc. Nonetheless, I don't think stickers are particularly notable and this section should be stricken along with the not notable Popular Culture section. Tom94022 (talk) 17:14, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

FujiFilm Connection?

I was told by tech support at FujiFilm many years ago that they developed the media for the Zip drives. Can anyone verify this? Jayscore (talk) 17:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Just Google "Fujifilm zip disk" and u will see that you can today buy such disks. I seem to recall that Iomega's patent and copyright position necessitated a license for such media and that too can be Googled to confirm. Tom94022 (talk) 20:06, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Overpriced

The Zip disks were overpriced. I disassembled both a 100 Mb Zip disk and a 3.5 inch floppy. I did this by prying the plastic shells apart with a screwdriver. The two matched part for part. Every part of one type of disk had a nearly identical part in the other disk. The only difference was that the Zip disk shell was thicker. The Zip disks sold for 7 to 8 dollars. The 3.5 inch floppies sold for 20 to 40 cents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.251.22.236 (talk) 04:07, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

what a naive post! you interpret visual similarities to mean technological identicality, a really dumb oversimplification. naturally a magnetic medium that can hold 100, 250, or 750 mb in the same circular space as a 1.44 mb alternative - will cost more to implement due to requiring finer technology. that's the reason.

if you'd read the article, this is all in there, so you'd know better than to come here complaining about your theory that zip disks are just floppy disks in a thicker package.

and if you'd read the rules of wikipedia, you'd know better than to think a talk page is a fitting location for your opinions and daft theories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.216.55.75 (talk) 01:15, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

The kicker in this case, really, is... get a bunch of SSDD, DSDD, DSHD and DSED floppies, all 3.5". Maybe a couple of 5.25s" as well, SSSD and DSHD, and an 8" just for funzies. Have someone else pull them apart for you and arrange the guts in random order on a table, whilst you're out of the room. Have them leave without saying a word. Now you go in and try to work out which of the little pieces of magfilm go into which shell. There's a difference of 8x capacity between the lowest and highest density 3.5", and the highest density 3.5" has 16x the capacity of the physically larger, single-density, single-sided 5.25" (and more than 2x that of the high-density 5.25", and is somewhere between equal to through at least 4x the capacity of any given 8"). And the secret sauce is as much in the disc coating formulations and how they're applied to the plastic substrate as in the drives themselves. If you can tell one from the other just by eyeballing it, then you've got a pretty special skill right there.

Alternatively, pull an LS120 apart. It should look nothing like any floppy disc you've ever clapped eyes on. But it has only slightly higher capacity than a Zip100, and half that of a 250. Now pull a bunch of 3.5" hard drives apart, from 40mb to 4Gb capacity. You won't see any difference in the platters. And the two sizes were just-about contemporary with each other, the latter selling for an insane price whilst the former were in the bargain bucket... 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Floppy disks were disposable after a few uses, Zip disks had lifetime warranty! I still use them, either with IDE, USB or SCSI (it just flies!). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.249.17.120 (talk) 00:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

And on the flipside, there were many people who found that they wore out and started suffering Click Death issues within a few years. Whilst I have some floppy discs that are more than 30 years old and still work OK. It's a huge case of YMMV... 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

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Needs something about the stock market bubble

Zip Drive was so popular that in the mid 1990s, Iomega was worth more than General Motors-- something crazy like that. The Motley Fool wrote, Dec 16, 1999, in an article online called, "And Then There Was Light" that "In the fall of 1994, something revolutionary happened. Investors around the world met in one place online and began to piece together the complete business of one Utah company. The company's new product that they discussed hadn't even been released to the market yet. It hadn't been marketed. It was just rolling out of production. The company was Iomega (NYSE: IOM) and the product was, of course, its Zip drive, a simple portable data storage solution.... Within 13 months, the Fool's Iomega investment represented nearly half the portfolio's total value after having risen over 1,500%. The Zip drive became the best-selling computer peripheral device in history (a rank it still holds), with a million being sold every several weeks. Most major PC makers began to offer Zip drives in their "boxes." The possibility for a new data storage standard held strong. But not strong enough." First, they proved fragile; then the DVD killed them. But I remember the instant millionaires on paper, and near-hysterical financial articles about the Zip drive having "repealed the law of [stock market] gravity." The insane profits triggered the boom, then the first spectacular bust. This little bit of paleo-technology has an important social history. Profhum (talk) 00:58, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

And we've seen similar play out repeatedly since, particularly with the dotcom bubble, and then Bitcoin. Any time you see a meteoric rise, and people saying it's a new investment paradigm... it's time to get extremely wary. Cash out half of whatever you've put in at the first sign of a significant falter, and if that isn't the sign of an actual crash and it soars much further, cash out at least half if not all of the rest at the next stumble. These things generally seem to follow the same old pattern, there's only so much money that can be sunk into them, only so much leeway the market is ever willing to give a disruptive new concept, and it always comes out that 90% of the value is blown up by bluster and mania. Once the culprits stop blowing (usually either because they've run out of cash to put in to it, or have seen that the market's about to turn anyway and so have themselves cashed out), the bubble collapses. Disinvesting by halves gives you at least a fair chance of not losing more than either half your initial capital, or missing out on more than half the potential gains, from falling into a bull or bear trap and seeing them as a sign to either cash out in full just before the actual boom, or to keep your full investment in something that's about to tank extremely hard. 51.7.49.27 (talk) 16:30, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

What does this have to do with Zip?

Jeppesen distributes navigation database updates, and Universal Avionics supplies TAWS, UniLink and Performance databases for upload into flight management systems via solid-state data transfer units.[12][13] 139.138.6.121 (talk) 09:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I looked at the sources and rewrote it to: "Zip disks were still in use in aviation as of 2012. Jeppesen distributed navigation database updates, and Universal Avionics supplies TAWS, UniLink and Performance databases for upload into flight management systems via 100 and 250 MB Zip disks." Knuthove (talk) 14:07, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Date discontinued

@Angelgreat: has asserted a series of incorrect dates in the info box for the discontinuance of ZIP. It took a simple search of SEC records to invalidate the earlier assertions. There is no doubt that production of drives and discs was discontinued by Iomega at some date and sales at some later date thereafter but the information should not be added to the info box until there is a WP:RS and it first should be added to the text of the article. Also note Iomega may have had licensees who continued production after Iomega discontinued. FWIW apparently Fuji Film still makes and sells ZIP discs and they are available tomorrow. Please see e.g.: [4] Most manufacturers are reluctant to announce a discontinuance so you may have a hard time finding a RS. Tom94022 (talk) 20:34, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, but those seem to be new old stock zip disks. Angelgreat (talk) 13:36, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Angelgreat: The Fuji Zip discs are advertised as "new" so I am pretty sure they are and like most things they are shipped I suspect from channel inventory. We don't know whether the inventory will or will not be replenished if and when the the channel inventory is depleted. But the fact remains that at least new discs are currently available in the market so any statement about discontinuance of discs or drives has to be based in a [[WP:RS|reliable source] and qualified by the known current availability of discs. I've looked for such RSes without success. Tom94022 (talk) 17:35, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

'New' in this context probably means that they have not previously been sold or used. It does not necessarily mean that they were manufactured recently. It is quite common to find stocks of 'new' (as in unused) devices that are actually quite old in terms of age (so called 'NOS' - for the oxymoronic 'new old stock'). There is so little demand for discs these days that it would not be worth while for Fuji to still make them. 86.158.241.251 (talk) 18:29, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Relationship to Zip compression

Why was it named the "Zip" drive? The article should state whether or not there is any relationship to Zip compression. cagliost (talk) 14:53, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cagliost: Zip compression was not provided with the Zip product announcement nor was it explicitly mentioned in the announcement literature. Absent a reliable source, any mention of Zip compression in context of the products naming would be pure speculation and inappropriate. The article already has a header pointing to Zip compression which is sufficient. Tom94022 (talk) 17:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)