"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 :

​

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)

 

[Kai Robinson]

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.

View attachment 19330
(ignore that it is out of focus, it told me what I needed to see)

View attachment 19331

Datasheet for that IC: https://www.ic72.com/pdf_file/-/77392.pdf

Available here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194853211483

 

[phipli]

Datasheet for that IC: https://www.ic72.com/pdf_file/-/77392.pdf

Available here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194853211483

Thanks Kai, that will need to wait for funds sadly.

 

[JDW]

@phipli
I have the same exact USB model Zip drive, except mine is functional and doesn't have that oddball LED flash in back...

I plugged the stock AC adapter into mine and the USB cable into my iMac and left it for 3 hours, not inserting a disk once. I then aimed my UTi260B thermal camera at the top side of the drive (fully assembled) and shot the thermal photo below. (Ambient room temperature is right about the 23.4° shown.)

Zooming in on that hotspot...

View from the bottom side showing that same hot spot...

Because your hot spot showed 29°C, I see no issues in terms of a certain chip heating more than others.

 

[phipli]

@phipli
I have the same exact USB model Zip drive, except mine is functional and doesn't have that oddball LED flash in back...

View attachment 19390

I plugged the stock AC adapter into mine and the USB cable into my iMac and left it for 3 hours, not inserting a disk once. I then aimed my UTi260B thermal camera at the top side of the drive (fully assembled) and shot the thermal photo below. (Ambient room temperature is right about the 23.4° shown.)

View attachment 19391

Zooming in on that hotspot...

View attachment 19392

View from the bottom side showing that same hot spot...

View attachment 19396

Because your hot spot showed 29°C, I see no issues in terms of a certain chip heating more than others.

Thanks JDW - the actual temp was closer to 40 (the photos I picked were because they gave a better overall view), but given yours is through the housing I suspect they're the same. Good to know. I am curious what is wrong with mine considering it is new old stock.

 

[JDW]

I am curious what is wrong with mine considering it is new old stock.

While a sealed-in-box defect isn't entirely outside the realm of the impossible, I would speculate that is unlikely. And I doubt bad caps are the culprit either. The most likely explanation is that the previous owners (in the plural, no doubt) threw the thing around quite a bit. That thing problem had multiple hard drops since its manufacture. What if a mechanical part slipped out of place, ever so slightly as a result of a drop, resulting in a warning LED telling you that you need to adjust one of the moving parts back into its original location?

Of course, having documentation describing what that LED flashing means would offer us the best clues of all.

 

[jibsaramnim]

I'm no expert on any of this, but from my small attempts trying to get mine to do anything more than just blink it did not appear to be an issue on the mechanical side.

To test this I temporarily swapped the sensor/mechanical parts with a known good model's (a SCSI variant), which yielded the same blinking light result.

The (non-working) USB model's sensor/mechanical parts worked fine when I tried them in this other model.

I also tried another power supply to rule that out as a possible issue. I actually use an USBA to barrel jack cable as that's easier to deal with than those large non-multi-voltage bricks these often came with, at least for me it is.

It would definitely be helpful if there is any documentation to be found on what this device's blinking light state means.

 

[JDW]

It would definitely be helpful if there is any documentation to be found on what this device's blinking light state means.

Iomega was pretty inept to have only put the front two LEDs into the documentation:

 

[jibsaramnim]

Yeah

Iomega was pretty inept to have only put the front two LEDs into the documentation:

Yeah, it seems like there's no mention of the third light (on the PCB) even, which is easily visible on their transparent models. Unfortunately there seems to be little helpful information out there, which makes this whole endeavor "slightly" more challenging. It also doesn't help that it seems like the build quality of these later ZIP100 models seems worse than the older SCSI and Parallel port variants. Maybe the SCSI to USB logic they implemented (I believe?) was a bit too jankily done.