This is probably going to be one of those posts that get buried at the bottom of my drafts folder, as it really doesn’t mean a lot to anyone but me, but I’ll continue typing it anyway in the vain hope that I will one day, be able to make use of it. It will consist of me just rambling on about nothing for the next several paragraphs.

By the title of the posting, you’ll probably be thinking that I’ve just bought a new sofa, or something. No, for you see, I have for the first time in 8 years connected my zip drive up to my computer. It’s wonderfully obsolete.

The story began in approximately 1999. I can’t remember the exact date, or even the exact year, but the data on the disk that I found would suggest either late 1998, or early 1999.

I remember Daddykins had gone to Currys on the marina to have a look at something. Possibly a new TV, or video. I would have been on the dole at this point.

My computer setup was using a 10Gb drive, which would often become full. With the only external storage available at the time being the humble floppy disk, I would find myself just deleting stuff because I needed the space. Whilst in Currys, I spied the zip drive, which would allow me to move a whole 10% of my drive onto removable media in one go. Considering I was a child of the Job Centre, the investment was immense. £100, plus a bit more. It definitely broke three figures anyway.

I had first became acquainted with Zip drives in 1998, when I was doing skivvy IT work at the accountants on Victoria road, and had used zip drives to move old data from an old Win 3.1 machine to a Win95 machine. I accomplished this using DOS. God, those were the days.

Anyway, I purchased it (or rather, Daddykins purchased it for me, and I would pay him the money back over a period of time. this was often the arrangement for hardware I purchased befire I got a proper job.

After the initial setup, and ripping off the paper mache moulded sides that the drive was held into, I connected it, and installed it as you’d expect. It’s a parallel port device, so it needed drivers. I believe these were included on a floppy disk. I definitely know you could create a “guest” disk, allowing the drive to be recognised on any machine temporarily.

I absolutely adored it. I only had one 100Mb disk for it at the time, but still, the 10% free disk space was an absolute dream. I didn’t have a full connection to the internet at that point, so 10% of hard drive space would take a while to fill. This means that if I needed a new disk, I could plan for it well in advance. This I did. I probably used Scan to buy them, at what would now be an extortionate price.

Disaster was about to strike, and ironically, thanks to the data on the disk (which I’ll come to in a minute, or an hour the way I’m typing). It was March 1999. I had ordered a few things for my machine, such as a new CDROM drive, and amongst this, was an extra 100Mb disk. For some reason, I’d set my computer up downstairs. I presume it was so I could easily work on the machine when the new parts came, without having to fit everything on what would have been a very untidy desk.

And, this is the disaster. Within minutes of inserting that new ZIP disk, I stood up to do something. My foot trailed along the zip drive’s power lead, and “Bang Crash, RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”… The drive had fallen to the floor, and the “RAAA” was coming from the fact that the impact had ripped the disk surface while it was spinning, and the drive heads were now completely out of alignment. I was the owner of one completely fucked zip drive, only a few months old.

It was one of those moments that just made me want to cry.

Daddykins suggested taking it back to Currys, and suggesting that it was faulty. Luckily, I’d read something about a “click of death”, where the heads in the zip drive would click twice, and not mount the disk. This was exactly what mine had been doing.

Off we went to Currys, my hands clammy, clasping the casualty. I went up to the desk, mumbled something like “Oh, it’s got the click of death”. The guy looked at me slightly strangely, but without further hesitation, nipped into the back office, and came out with a nice, shiny new boxed drive. I was beyond happy.

I vowed to never make that mistake again, and make sure that its footing is secure, and that I don’t have wires trailing all over the shop. The zip drive still had regular usage, and even received a mention on 8th February 2001. This was technically the day that my beloved zip drive moved into the realms of obseletion, as Daddykins had purchased a CDRW drive to go into his computer. We didn’t have a network at this point, so the 5 zip disks I had accumulated were put to use simply transferring the data between the two machines, so I was able to write whatever I wanted to CD, and it would be accessible on any computer I had, either then, or in the future. No need to lug about huge drives, and even less need to install drivers.

Shortly after finding out just how convenient the whole CD writing thing was, I went out and bought my very own CD drive, possibly from Scan again. It was at this point, that the Zip drive was disconnected for the final time, and its path into obseletion had been completed. The data that was on the disks at the time is probably still on them, but unfortunately at the time of typing this, I can only find one disk, and it would just happen to be the most important one of the lot. It was my old website backup disk!

Amongst the several folders on the disk is a little zip file, entitled “WebsiteNOV200.zip”. What’s even better, is that the files included, are actually from December 1999. It includes the very first incarnation of the blog. Back then, I’d called it a diary. I had to type it out in plain HTML, as blogging hadn’t been invented, certainly not in the automated sense anyway.

EDIT: 100Mb of a 10gig drive isn’t 10%, it’s 1%… this will be why NASA turned down my job application. Maybe.