Power supply for IOmega SCSI ZIP100 drive?

April 19, 2024 4:35 AM

What power supply should I use to revive one of these? The manual is very vague, and it’s an antique…
posted by pompomtom to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: ….and going for the record of fastest self-answer, it’s 5v 1A, centre-positive. I found the original supply on giving up and putting the sampler away.
posted by pompomtom at 4:49 AM on April 19 [7 favorites]

Note that you might not need one. These drives took 5v1A but they shipped at a time when power-over-USB wasn't universally available and included 5V1A bricks in the box. On modern hardware it might just power on with the USB cable only.
posted by mhoye at 4:53 AM on April 19

mhoye, it's a SCSI drive, not usb
posted by rikschell at 5:13 AM on April 19 [1 favorite]

Oh, right, whoops.
posted by mhoye at 6:03 AM on April 19

If you can meter the output before using it, I'd recommend it. I have been using surplus Iomega power supplies for years to feed my Roku SoundBridge audio things, and the power supplies have a failure mode where they output only very low voltage noise
posted by scruss at 7:16 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]

Last comment is double true. I sold off a bunch of my old electronics over the last couple of years, and power supplies are all over the place in terms of longevity.

I never had any Iomega power supplies go bad, but that low voltage failure mode is waaaaay better than some ancient HP ones that decided to randomly double their output voltage.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:41 PM on April 19 [1 favorite]