7 Aug
2026
7 Aug
'26
5:47 p.m.
On Aug 7, 2026, at 5:32 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I bought one of the early SCSI drives for my Mac PowerBook 520c while I was still in the
Navy, onboard the USS George Washington (CVN-73), and it was “amazing”. I got the laptop
a little over a year before I got out of the Navy, just after the one year mark the
laptop’s backlight died, and after I got out and bought a PowerMac 8500/180, I found that
the disks were largely unreadable (apparently click of death). My PowerMac G4/450 came
with a built in Zip drive, I never used it. I personally wouldn’t touch a Zip disk with
the preverbal 10-foot pole at this point.
I’m at the point where I don’t see me getting one of my physical PDP-11’s up and running
for probably another 10+ years, basically I view that as a probable retirement project. I
also consider the Capacitors in the power supplies to be a mandatory replacement prior to
applying power. I have SCSI adaptors, and despite my collection of SCSI HD’s, I’ll
probably opt for a SCSI drive emulator. I installed a couple in VAXstation 4000’s during
my last Sabbatical, and they’re awesome!
Sadly I rarely have any time for Classic Computing at the moment, and when I do it’s
usually Mainframe or VMS related, and done via emulation. I don’t have the time to keep
the physical hardware running. At least I was able to spend my last sabbatical doing
preventative maintenance on my Amiga’s, VAXstation 4000’s and to check over my Atari
TT030.
Zane
> Alternatively, has anyone ever tried to use a
parallel ZIP-100 on a PDP-11?
On Fri, 7 Aug 2026, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote:
I am not aware of anyone using parallel ZIP
drives on anything but a
PC parallel port. The SCSI ones work fine on pretty much any machine
Maybe my experiences were atypical, or maybe that's a use of the word
"fine" that I was unaware of :-)
When they first came out, they were really cool.
But, they started dying. A lot.
Was the "click of death" there all along, or was there a design or
manufacturing flaw introduced later on?
I heard that some had a rubber bumper on the head assembly, and some not?
Could THAT have been the problem?