History of Computers - Zip Drive
Page created by JOHN KIM.
An Iomega Zip Drive
The Zip Drive
The zip drive is a portable computer storage system created to help improve the capacity for files from a single computer or network. The company Iomega developed and then released the first zip drive in 1994. The original zip drive stored up to 100 MB of memory, compared to the floppy disk's 10 MB of memory during that time period. A modern zip drive can hold up to 2 GB of memory.
Overview
The zip drive was an upgraded version of one of Iomega's previous inventions, the Bernoulli Box. However, unlike the Bernoulli Box, which spun a PET film disk, the zip drive used a cartridge roughly about the same size of a 3.5 inch floppy disk. [2] The zip drive system consists of electromagnetic read-write heads on top of a voice coil actuator. The voice coil actuator is a coil of wire attached to a loudspeaker cone and a piece of magnetic metal such as iron, which creates a magnetic field that allows magnetic pulses to pass through it. [3] The voice coil actuator is crucial for the read-write heads to work. Read-write heads converts electrical signals from the computer and converts them to magnetic pulses to store ("write") data onto the cartridge. They also convert the magnetic pulses into electrical signals that are encoded into binary bits to be processed by the computer. [4] This rather simple drive made it affordable and very popular during the 1990s.
Significance
Although slightly less portable than the floppy disk, the zip drive was faster and held much more memory than the floppy disk. Due to recent inventions such as CDs and USB flash drives, zip drives are not used for practical reasons but rather for "retro computing enthusiasts." [6] However, the zip drive was the first machine that was able to transfer and store large amounts of information between computers.
References
- ↑ http://www.digicircle.com/images/product_image/
- ↑ http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=stor
- ↑ http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/speaker5.htm
- ↑ http://www.datarecovery.com.sg/data_recovery/hard_disk_head_crash.htm
- ↑ http://alasir.com/books/hards/
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive#Legacy
Links
http://go.iomega.com/en-us/?partner=4760
