Dreamcast prototype zip drive

[Kid Ice]

http://dreamcast.dcemu.co.uk/prototype-sega-dreamcast-zip-drive-on-ebay-73945.html

How cool would it have been to own one of these? Just imagine you could...uhh....uhh. I don't know. Download Sega Swirl? Maybe XBLA style games would have been possible?

[ProgrammingAce]

It was mainly for web content and emails...

Iomega was pimping their zip drives to any game developer who would listen. There's also PS2 versions of the drive. I only ever heard of one game using it, i want to say it was unreal tournament? I'm pretty sure that was it...

[otaku]

I remember zip drives when they came out and some people making a big deal of them, I thought they were a joke looks like I was right!

[diskoboy]

I remember hearing about that - but I had one for my PC, and hated it. I wouldn't have bought that thing - I would now.....

Did you have to buy special Zip discs, or would PC discs work on it?

[PallarAndersVisa]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-Dreamcast-Zip-Drive-extension-box-rare_W0QQitemZ250163670619QQihZ015QQcategoryZ62054 QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

TEN GRAND?!!!??!?!

BWAWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

[wallydawg]

I still use zip drives in my autocad class to be OG.

[boatofcar]

I remember zip drives when they came out and some people making a big deal of them, I thought they were a joke looks like I was right!

Actually, you were wrong. Zip drives were the de facto rewriteable mass storage device until USB thumb drives were introduced. Do you know how much a CDR Drive cost in 1994, the year the zip drive was released? Heck, then blank cds were like $10 apiece at least.

[Bratwurst]

People often confuse the zip drive with the jazz format, which is what tanked for Iomega. Jazz cartridges were expensive and failure prone. Zip disks were great for their time.

[Push Upstairs]

I remember Zip drives. The only one I ever used worked half the time and quit working after being used like a dozen times.

Good riddance.

I'm glad flash drives came along.

[boatofcar]

Now that we're on the subject, when my dad bought our family's first Intel-based machine back in 1995, he blew a ton of money on a ]tape backup system. In 1995! Needless to say, backing up the system was something he only did once and when the drive did crash, the tape backup was corrupt.

[sisko]

It is a pretty nice concept, and one that I would have like to see come to fruition.

However, $10Gs? Lets get reasonable here...

[CosmicMonkey]

This is the first time I've seen decent shots of the Zip unit. All I had before were a couple of Edge articles with small grainy pictures of the front of the unit.

I certainly never expected this to pop up on eBay though.

[Flack]

I still have a Zip drive and Zip disks because of the Mr. Backup (Z64) (http://www.softidea.com/Z64/). I've considered doing the 2.5 HD hack to it but never got around to it. The Z64 has probably the most user friendly interface of any N64 backup device, otherwise I'd ditch it.

[cyberfluxor]

Wow. Just wow. Why the hell would you put a starting $10k bid, and then you have 6 freaking feedback. Then, once you get the thing there's absolutely nothing it works with/for, so it's a dust collector for $10Gs. I'd have to do a local pick-up and pay directly with check & get my item or some hardcore trading method to protect myself. Then there's the 10563 views on the auction already... Wow.

[bust3dstr8]

If I had 10K to spend on that, I would pick it up myself.
Whats a $300 plane ticket after you dumped 10K for a non functioning chunk of plastic:?
The peace of mind would be worth it.

[PallarAndersVisa]

here's the kicker!

"Shipping insurance
Not offered"

[CosmicMonkey]

Well the seller has uploaded some more pictures. Shows the unit powered on with a green light. What's the chance that some released games that were supposed to be compatible do still have code in them to access the unit? Not as if anyone's been able to test so far.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

It sounds ridiculous now, but back in September 1999 the ZIP drive was actually the thing that made me end up buying a Dreamcast. I was only really into classic gaming at the time (mostly Atari 2600 and Master System), so even though the DC looked nice, I wasn't entirely convinced until I started reading up on the ZIP drive and realized that since this thing was apparently capable of booting code, it would only be a matter of time before it got hacked and all sorts of emulators got ported thanks to the fact that the Dreamcast was running on Windows. So I rushed right out and bought a Dreamcast.

Well, the ZIP drive never came out and the DC didn't run on Winodws, but it turned out I was right on the money about the emulators and homebrew. MIL-CD and KallistiOS delivered where ZIP and WinCE failed. And I still use the Master System and Atari 2600 emus on the Dreamcast all the time.


I still have a Zip drive and Zip disks because of the Mr. Backup (Z64) (http://www.softidea.com/Z64/). I've considered doing the 2.5 HD hack to it but never got around to it. The Z64 has probably the most user friendly interface of any N64 backup device, otherwise I'd ditch it.
I'm using a hard drive in my Z64 and I can tell you it's great. Loading is so much faster and you can organize everyting in folders and such. It's so much nicer than having to use ZIP disks (though, I really liked having my rainbow of ZIP disks that were color coded by genre). There's a new firmware that was released a few month ago that adds support for compact flash cards on a CF-to-IDE adapter, too. I'm planning to update to that sometime soon. It's possible to use both at the same time, so I'll still keep most stuff on HD, but it'll be nice to be able to easily play other ROMs that aren't on the HD through the CF slot.


Well the seller has uploaded some more pictures. Shows the unit powered on with a green light. What's the chance that some released games that were supposed to be compatible do still have code in them to access the unit? Not as if anyone's been able to test so far.
Well, the ZIP drive part may be a functional ZIP drive (it's probably just an off-the-shelf mechanism...it may even be IDE), but I wouldn't assume that the rest of the unit is 100% functional. I think this is the unit that was displayed at various industry expos back in 1999 and from I've read in the past, that was just a display mockup. The DC's ext. port is passing power to the ZIP drive mechanism, but that may be all the connection there is.


...word is bondage...

[Steve W]

I loved Zip disks back in the day. My first computer only had a 850MB hard drive, those little 100MB disks really helped out. I upgraded the internal HD to a 4gig drive, and installed a second 10gig later on. When I bought a new machine, the Zip came with it, to help transfer all my data. But that one hundred megabytes just didn't feel like it was worth the effort any more. I did start using it with my old Powerbook 180C, but once I got a new Powerbook G4, the Zip was consigned to the closet where it collects dust. It was a great device back in it's heyday. Too bad Iomega never came up with a good, useful follow-up.

[PentiumMMX]

Now that we're on the subject, when my dad bought our family's first Intel-based machine back in 1995, he blew a ton of money on a ]tape backup system. In 1995! Needless to say, backing up the system was something he only did once and when the drive did crash, the tape backup was corrupt.

I remember the tape drives. My mom bought one and instealled it in our PC, and never really used it because it was easier to insteall everything from scratch (We didn't have any important files that couldn't fit on a floppy disk, anyway)

[kazuo]

BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW~!

WAY too much for that! It's totally useless! Money is better spent on a Gold NWC Cart... the NWC cart also has far far FAR higher investment value.

MAYBE if it was like $1000... but I'm sure if it was $1000, someone would have bought it already.

[tom]

Zip Drive (left on table) I use it to keep my Room of Doom back-up on it. And little files like IE7, Messenger, Quicktime, ALC, Monkey Audio and other files you don't need that often. Works a treat.

[LuxKiller65]

I'm sure it was a mistake: he meant to put 100 and not 10000.

http://www.forumzone.it/faccine/42.gif

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Wow, 10,000 dollars for something completely unusable (according to the questions he's answered). I'm sure that the money could be spent on an a better investment. But if someone does buy it, it will probably be for their own collection and would have no intention of reselling it. It is very possible that this is a well done scam, although the seller has posted more pictures at request of buyers, and it appears to be the real deal. No bids yet, wonder if it will sell? I will say it was a neat idea though, just super hard to justify the price.

[Jorpho]

Blarg, I think I still have a Zip drive or two and a whole mess of disks lying around that I haven't used in ages. How can I be rid of them?

[cyberfluxor]

It might be a bit difficult to get rid of them. I use zip disks to store older MAC and PC software (that were on floppies), game saves and other misc data on. The 5 I have total under 1GB of storage but it's really nice to have. I bought my internal Zip drive for $1 and the 5 disks for $3 over a year ago. I see external drives all the time (USB and Serial) for $5-10 with all accessories and a few disks.

[WanganRunner]

I'd say it's maybe worth $2,000-$5,000, definitely not $10k.

If it is the only one in the world though, that does make it a fairly valuable piece of prototype hardware.

I'd probably pay $2,000 for it, just to display it.

[ConsoleFreek]

Well at 10 grand I know I will not be owning one.

Would have been easer for them to put in a usb port.

[raregamergirl]

Starting bid now lowered to $4000. Will be interesting to see how bidding goes now...

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Yeah, rare, just noticed that. I am curious to see if anyone will bite too...

[sisko]

$4K is much more reasonable, but I hope that the price isn't too steep for homebrew developers to bite.

I'll never be able to get it, but as a Dreamcast fan, I'd love to see some use come out of it, rather than having it sit on the shelf of a collector for the rest of time.

[cyberfluxor]

I'm suprised it hasn't hit more than 20k views already. I wouldn't doubt someone will bid now, also wouldn't doubt some jackasses throwing fake bids in too.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

$4K is much more reasonable, but I hope that the price isn't too steep for homebrew developers to bite.

I'll never be able to get it, but as a Dreamcast fan, I'd love to see some use come out of it, rather than having it sit on the shelf of a collector for the rest of time.
Well, there's already various projects out there for hacking the DC's extension port into a full IDE interface, which I think would be much more interesting to homebrewers.

This thing is really only good for collectors. I'm still very doubtful that it's even fully functioning.


...word is bondage...

[Jorpho]

This thing is really only good for collectors. I'm still very doubtful that it's even fully functioning.

Heh. We haven't even mentioned clickdeath in this thread yet.