"Brand New" USB Translucent Zip Drive Error

[phipli]

I bought a NOS Zip Drive on Facebook Market Place - one of the old shape ones that is translucent and USB (to match the early iMacs). I was pretty excited because it was still sealed and so were the provided 3 disks and the manual / drivers. It arrived a short while ago, I opened it and plugged it in, but instead of the usual startup procedure where both front lights come on for a second, then one goes off, both stay on forever, and a second orange light near the back, inside and on the PCB, flashes out an error code. Putting a disk in, the disk does not spin up and you can't eject it other than with a paperclip.

If it isn't obvious, this isn't one of the two common Zip issues I know of.

1. This is not click of death, we're not getting that far.
2. This is not a PSU issue, I have tried a known good PSU from one of my SCSI drives.

Is anyone familiar with this failure mode? Do you know what causes it? Do you know how to fix it?

The Drive :

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The Error :

 

[robin-fo]

It is not impossible this could be a electrolytic capacitor issue (due to the lack of use in the last decades ?) Do you consider recapping?

 

[phipli]

It is not impossible this could be a electrolytic capacitor issue (due to the lack of use in the last decades ?) Do you consider recapping?

Afternoon @robin-fo -

Since making my post I've measured the two tin can electrolytics and tantalums and they're as expected in both capacitance and resistance. There is a low resistance over one tantalum, but the low resistance was the surrounding circuit and not the capacitor when I removed it and measured again. It doesn't look like the issue is either of these types of capacitors, and I've been visually inspecting the ceramics and haven't spotted anything yet.

I've also verified that the 12MHz USB crystal is functioning.

Regarding the vogons thread I linked to, unlike theirs, mine keeps flashing the error even when I unplug the drive mechanism.

 

[robin-fo]

Looks like it‘s time to pull my USB zip out of the cupboard to check if it‘s still working…

 

[phipli]

Does anyone in the UK have one of these with the click of death that I could nab the controller board from if I can't fix this one? I haven't been back to it yet because of distractions, but given it doesn't have the most common failure mode, it might be the easiest way to save it.

 

[jibsaramnim]

This sounds exactly like the behavior mine has. I purchased it used (and "untested") on eBay and of the now four ZIP100 drives I somehow ended up with, this is the only USB one and the only one with the exact issue as you describe.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of love for these. I've personally not been able to find out anything more about what this is — or better yet, how to fix it.

If you do end up finding out more, I would very much love to hear about it!

 

[phipli]

This sounds exactly like the behavior mine has. I purchased it used (and "untested") on eBay and of the now four ZIP100 drives I somehow ended up with, this is the only USB one and the only one with the exact issue as you describe.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of love for these. I've personally not been able to find out anything more about what this is — or better yet, how to fix it.

If you do end up finding out more, I would very much love to hear about it!

I broke out the thermal camera and it looks like the head driver IC is getting warmer than I would expect. Not super hot... but it heats up instantly and it doesn't in older models I have (although it is a different part). My next step would be to try swapping it out, but I don't have another the same at the moment so I've drawn to a stop for now.

(ignore that it is out of focus, it told me what I needed to see)