G3 Iomega Zip 100 Drive was working now doesn't mount disks

Nov 27, 2022
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Another day another new problem on my old hardware :)
So not even a week ago I had a Biege G3 tower with working CD-Rom, Floppy, USB, and Zip Drive. Today everything works BUT the zip drive. I'm hoping the drive isn't dead but I know Zip Drives are kind of notorious for that. In any case here is what I've done for troubleshooting so far:

1) Check to see if profiler sees the drive. If I leave the IDE cable alone profiler doesn't see the drive at all. It just isn't listed any more.
2) If I move the IDE cable down from the CD Rom to the Zip Drive profiler DOES see the drive but says there is no media mounted even when I try multiple disks.
3) I wondered if I had installed something that conflicted with the drive so I threw another IDE hard drive in there and put a fresh copy of 9.2.2 on the drive with one partition just to keep things simple. There was no difference the drive had the same behaviour of showing as listed in profiler so long as it was on the CD-Rom connection but not showing up if it was on its normal connection.
4) I tried installing the Iomega Ware software for OS 9 and letting it scan for drives. It did not detect the IDE drive even when profiler sees it.
5) For laughs I threw a USB Zip Drive into the USB port and Iomegaware saw that drive just fine. Mounted all my disks without issues
6) A friend of mine gave me another PC IDE Zip Drive to try. He was not sure of the condition of the drive so it was a freebie. I tried the drive in the G3 and exact same behaviour as the other drive. Doesn't show in profiler unless its on the CD-Rom connector.

I know the first drive was working last week but I have since added an ATI video card and Tango 2.0 USB card since then. I think I also pulled out both IDE cables and wiped them off as this electronic recylcer machine was pretty filthy inside and I wanted to dust things out a bit. So have I done something to disable the drive by accident or do I really have two dead IDE Zip drives on my hands is my question.

Any advice appreciated.