I have an external ZIP drive that comes with a cable featuring two rows of several pins and a power cord. I'm wondering what kind of adapter or equipment I might need to connect it to a modern laptop. Can anyone help with this?
3 Answers
Honestly, your best bet might be to skip the hassle and look for a USB ZIP drive instead. Trying to connect it to a modern laptop is probably going to be tough and could cost you a lot of time and money. If you could share a photo of the back of your drive, we could help identify the ports. Some older drives use a parallel port, which is hard to convert to USB. Alternatively, if it has Mac-style SCSI ports, you'd need a specific USB adapter for that, but they can be super expensive.
If your drive has those two rows of pins, it might be an IDE cable. It's worth double-checking the type of port it uses. Can you post a picture or tell us how many pins are there? That'll help everyone figure it out!
You'll likely need a USB to parallel port cable since that drive seems to be using a parallel port adapter. However, I recommend finding a USB ZIP drive, especially since the ones that are 100 or 250 MB are backwards compatible. Just a heads up, if you stick with the parallel version, you’ll have to search for drivers to make it work, while the USB ones generally operate plug-and-play!
Absolutely! And finding that driver for the parallel port may not be easy, while the USB version will just work without any fuss.