Internal Zip 250. Was working...now, not so much

I installed a zip250 in my 200XL. It recognized it initially no problem. Then it began to only recognize the disk that it initially loaded a program from. If I swapped disks then it would tell me there was no floppy device. I would have to reboot the machine. But that didn't really bother me too much. Now, however, it just gives me the message that there is no floppy device.

The green light on the drive stays on. Disks won't eject. I checked with my meter and 5V is going to the drive.

Anyone else have this problem. I am going to check my cable for intermittents and then clean the pins.

Sounds like a bad zip drive and you need to replace it.

I am thinking the same thing.

Most of my Zip disks are unreadable anyway.

Looks like its time to install a card reader.


Just about any ATAPI internal card reader? I'll do some reading.

finnegan wrote:I installed a zip250 in my 200XL.

The 250 believe it or not is said to be even more unreliable than the ZIP100.

I can believe it because in all the years of using ZIP drives the only one that ever had the Click Of Death was a 250 that was in my VP9000.
When I replaced it I put a 100 in and never had any more problems.
That includes about 7 new and 3 used units.

finnegan wrote:I am thinking the same thing.

Most of my Zip disks are unreadable anyway.

Looks like its time to install a card reader.


Just about any ATAPI internal card reader? I'll do some reading.

Most IDE card readers will work but not all. If you'd like to contact me, I can tell you about our card reader options, which include an IDE model.

Tee hee.

I may have totally screwed the pooch with what I just did.

I decided to put a new OS on it to see if it would recognize the drive. Well. I kind of blew it.

I put the OS on a zip. Used my external zip drive to load it.

But now it asks me to put in the mpc disk and I am pretty sure it means to put it in the disk drive, which is not there anymore...the broken internal zip is. I can't find my O.G. drive. I may have tossed it in a cleaning jag.

Poop.

anyone know if there is a way to make it boot from the external zip?

Ok. So I think maybe the OS wouldn't load from the Zip due to the fact that there were multiple files on the zip I put the OS on. At least I hope.

So I am going to get the OS on a clean disk from a friend and try that. Hope it works.

Since I know all of you were on tenterhooks.

Crap disks? Dunno.

Took the internal zip out of my friends and put it in mine and had 6 different disks w/ the OS. Tried them all w/ the same Loading : MPC2KXL.BIN freeze screen. Out of desperation tried them again. Then tried one 5 times because it was the only one to give me weird screens after the initial load message. On the 5th time it started. Forgot to load onto flash. Restarted and it came up no probs. Loaded fully and now I have 1.14 and my internal zip is most definitely crap.

So next thing is card reader.