Remember the ZIP Drive ?

[Jwalling]

For sure there were magnetic fields from the CRT yoke, but it's really the flyback that has the potential to corrupt magnetic media. That would be on the left side of a Mac, and books from the era do warn about putting floppy disks near there.

Actually, I suspect the degauss coil around the CRT might be the largest source of magnetic fields.

[helius]

The problem with certain QIC formats, like IOTAMAT, isn't a factory servo track per se, but that they use a kind of packet writing where the packets are synchronized by a burst signal that the drive isn't able to generate. If the burst is erased, the drive can't use the tape because it can't lock a PLL to that burst. They were not the most common QIC formats.

4mm DDS and 8mm Exabyte don't have the same issues because the helical stripes can be automatically tracked.

[helius]

Actually, I suspect the degauss coil around the CRT might be the largest source of magnetic fields.

A monochrome screen doesn't have or need a degauss coil.

[CatalinaWOW]

This thread captures what I like about this forum.  Only true engineering geeks could debate the technical advantages and shortcomings of technologies that have been outmoded for decades.  They all had flaws, and all lost the real test, the marketplace, after their brief time in the sun.

[HighVoltage]

This thread captures what I like about this forum.  Only true engineering geeks could debate the technical advantages and shortcomings of technologies that have been outmoded for decades.  They all had flaws, and all lost the real test, the marketplace, after their brief time in the sun.

So true and so many of us had so similar experiences like 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
May times I read something here on eevblog and say to myself what a coincidence that I had the very same kind of event.

In regards to iOmega, I think their business went down with the JAZ drive since it had so many problems.
I must have returned at least 10 drives to them and many more cartridges.
They got either repaired or replaced but never works reliable after they were a few month old.
 

[tooki]

The problem was that if it happened, the disk became unusable as there was no way to rewrite the servo tracks.  With damaged servo tracks, the disk will be stuck in click of death mode.  That this could damage the drive and drives could damage the disks was a separate problem with the hardware but are they really separate if they both came from poor engineering?

I understand the consequences of a lost servo track. But I dispute that this was a significant problem in real life.

Nothing I have ever read about the Click of Death (including a quick refresher just now) indicates that the servo tracks were a primary cause. It was misaligned drives that caused it.

The thing is, I could swear that the Jaz disks got the "click of death" before the Zip did, and that this threw greater scrutiny on the Zip once problems started creeping up. I don't think the problem was anywhere near as big as it was made out to be; my own Zip drives all worked perfectly, and in the years I worked at Apple resellers or doing Mac support, I never even saw a defective Zip drive. (Jaz was another matter...) I did support for literally hundreds of systems and never saw a bad Zip. I know that this is anecdote, but I do think the problem wasn't as big as many people think.

[james_s]

What I read about the click of death in regards to Zip drives was that there was a rubber bumper at the end stop for the R/W head that was later removed in a cost reduction. The lack of a bumper caused the head to smack the end of the track which eventually knocked it out of alignment.

The Jaz drives operated under a whole different principal, they were effectively a pair of rigid hard disc platters in a removable cartridge and I suspect a frequent cause of problems with those was dust getting into the cartridge either directly or getting into the drive with predictable results. My own Zip and Jaz drives are working fine, knock on wood, but they are rarely used.

[tooki]

Yep, that's precisely what I remember, too.

[VK3DRB]

ZIP drives are new-fangled contraptions for Yuppies compared to the stringy floppy. Most, if not all, of you have never heard of a stringy floppy. I only knew of one other person to have ever have owned one in 1979.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exatron_Stringy_Floppy

Incidentally I have a mate who owned an Elcaset around 1977. Even more rare then and ultra rare today. Valuable? Maybe.

[yada]

I had one. Never even filled up the first disk because the hard drive was big. Had it until recently, I had a lot of stuff I could have donated to these tech channels. Anyone want a scsi card still factory sealed in the box?

[albert22]

Sorry guys this zip was dead and I gutted to give my homemade ICD2 a case. This was long time ago but I still use it from time to time.
regards