The Failed Zip Drive Competitor - SyQuest SparQ Unboxing & Exploration

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  • Опубликовано: 22 янв 2025

Комментарии • 275

  • @tyta1
    @tyta1 Год назад +272

    "Mom trusts SparQ to keep her recipes top secret" - Indeed, once the cartridge fails nobody will be able to read them again ever 😉

  • @attack0nmem0ry
    @attack0nmem0ry Год назад +111

    I hadn't noticed previously, but I'm glad you followed through on that "wall of 3.5in disks" idea! 🍻 Looks epic.

  • @siliconinsect
    @siliconinsect Год назад +113

    I have the original Syquest from 1983. Imagine a 5mb metal HDD platter in a cartridge with proto-SCSI interface for Apple II. It even spins up and seeks like an old stepper hard drive.
    Great vid as usual!

    • @redleader6442
      @redleader6442 Год назад +1

      You talking about the drives that used 'Q-Paks?'

  • @kFY514
    @kFY514 Год назад +135

    To be fair, 50 units of 1GB cartridges could actually feel like lifetime supply back in 1997 😅

    • @punboleh7081
      @punboleh7081 Год назад +16

      That limit surely would have lasted for the life time of the company.

    • @skeleton_craftGaming
      @skeleton_craftGaming Год назад +4

      now you can't even get hard drives that small...

    • @LonelySpaceDetective
      @LonelySpaceDetective Год назад +4

      640k ought to be enough for anybody

    • @gyrgrls
      @gyrgrls Год назад +1

      @@LonelySpaceDetective "Please don't call me, I won't call you
      Don't tell me to fix it for you
      I'm not Bill Gates; I'm tech support"

  • @SylvesterAshcroft88
    @SylvesterAshcroft88 Год назад +16

    This is the first time I've heard about this format, it seems kinda neat!

  • @thedavyjones
    @thedavyjones Год назад +12

    Michael, your voice is so soothing and a pleasure to listen to. I hope you can more tech documentary videos in the future. I love those!

  • @panqueque445
    @panqueque445 Год назад +14

    "Today we're gonna be talking about... storage"
    YEAAAHHHH LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO

  • @JustPyroYT
    @JustPyroYT Год назад +7

    13:50 I know I already said that in another comment but this floppy wall looks INCREDIBLE! I really like it :D

  • @lexluthermiester
    @lexluthermiester Год назад +31

    I still have my Zip, Jaz, EZDrive and Sparq, with disks, and all work perfectly. I've only ever had one drive die and that was a parallel port Zip drive which got dropped and broke internal parts. IOMega was awesome enough to replace it, even though it was accidental damage. They replaced it with a SCSI version, which I was ok with! I had heard horror stories over the years, but never seen one personally.

  • @jeremiahufer7948
    @jeremiahufer7948 Год назад +14

    Fun fact from a german dude: "Sexy" is actually a song by german artist Marius Müller Westernhagen, released in 1989!

    • @nicholasneyhart396
      @nicholasneyhart396 7 месяцев назад +2

      The song is actually pretty good, better than I that would be.

  • @bbowman105
    @bbowman105 Год назад +15

    Unknown fact: The picture on the box is a couple calling tech support wondering why the drive is dead.

  • @X150t
    @X150t Год назад +8

    Always loved the spinup sound of zip drives

    • @LikeNOW100
      @LikeNOW100 Год назад

      Yes

    • @gyrgrls
      @gyrgrls Год назад

      That's where I used to store old zip archives. My Ella Fitzgerald music collection was kept on Jaz disks...

  • @tstahlfsu
    @tstahlfsu Год назад +7

    Oh man, I know people had problems but I LOVED my Sparq drive! Never had a single problem with it.

  •  Год назад +5

    I like how you had to remove the insert before being able to read the instructions on how to remove it

  • @InfiniteForces
    @InfiniteForces Год назад +36

    Michael,I saw a video about SyQuest on a channel called This Does Not Compute. In that video,Collin(the channel owner/presenter),talks about an even more failed drive competitor to both Iomega's Zip/Jaz and SyQuest's SparQ/SyJet drives,called the Orb Drive,from Castlewood Systems(a company that was founded by the same founder of SyQuest,along 10 other ex-employees from that company). It would be really nice if you could find a working one along with some blank media to showcase for us in one of your videos.

  • @maureen-hm4in
    @maureen-hm4in Год назад +3

    you did a great job creating the video! it made me want to learn more about these stuff , keep it up

  • @bladesofseven
    @bladesofseven Год назад +1

    Watching Colin from This Does Not Comp's video on the subject introduced me to this, so another video on Syquest is nice to see.

  • @boumerguy7042
    @boumerguy7042 Год назад +9

    I had an external variant of this device that used parallel port. It was really interesting for computers that did not had USB ports and sometimes no CD-ROM either.

    • @markshade8398
      @markshade8398 Год назад

      It exited before USB.... That's the reason for using the parallel port.

  • @seangraham-qf8tp
    @seangraham-qf8tp Год назад +3

    An MJD video never exciting thats not possible all MJD videos are entertaining. I mean this man offers so much in his videos love your videos

  • @diesieben07
    @diesieben07 Год назад +6

    The mysterious MIDI file is actually a real song by the same name of German artist Marius Müller-Westernhagen.

  • @egbront1506
    @egbront1506 Год назад +10

    I had the parallel port and ATAPI versions. These were great at the time but didn't last long. The ATAPI lasted maybe a month and the external drive started giving read errors after a few months. You clearly had to handle these with kid gloves. I did look at the Castlewood Orb drives as a replacement as those were twice the capacity and I hoped for better reliability but glad I cut my losses at the end.

    • @erikmerchant567
      @erikmerchant567 Год назад

      I still have an Orb drive and it still works great. Never had any issues with it. That said, I have two of these Sparq's and I've never took them out of the box due to all their failures. They were awful in that the failure wrecked the drive itself, damaged the disks in a manner that then ensured if it was inserted into another drive not already broken, it would damage it and break it spreading like a virus. Just terrible.

  • @vasacca
    @vasacca Год назад +3

    Very entertaining as usual!

  • @nonsuch
    @nonsuch Год назад +1

    I still use my ZIP, JAZZ, and Syquest drives for my musical instrument samplers. Of course I use new solutions like the Gotek Floppy Emulators, SCSI2SD, etc as well but, I still love the old parallel SCSI format for nostalgic reasons.

  • @IsoMacintosh
    @IsoMacintosh Год назад

    7:37
    Love how they tell you to open the door and pull the tab after you already did it.

  • @RacerX-
    @RacerX- Год назад +18

    Oh man SparQ and the earlier 1.5 GB SyJet were terrible products. These drives didn't cause their downfall though, as they had already been in trouble in 1995/1996. CD-R was the death stroke for them. For many years SyQuest owed the removable market for desktop publishing. Most DP houses used SyQuest. They were very reliable then. The direct competitor to the ZIP from SyQuest was the EZ135. It was faster and super cool at the time but also the last quality drive they made. But when DP moved on to other methods of transfer like CD-R and even internet transfer, it was the end for SyQuest.

    • @AWriterWandering
      @AWriterWandering Год назад +1

      Then CD-Rs got cheap enough for regular consumers to buy in bulk, killing off Zip too.

  • @Kumar_Kesh6969
    @Kumar_Kesh6969 Год назад +2

    I always enjoy your videos man!!!

  • @brianoconnell6459
    @brianoconnell6459 Год назад +4

    I recall one called the "Superdrive", which was a 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive, AND a MO (magnetooptical) drive capable of storing 120 MB as well, using disks of the same form factor. It was... Okay? At the time it came on the market, however, Iomega came out with the Jazz drive, which could store 640 MB (if memory serves), on one disk.

  • @aytowastaken
    @aytowastaken Год назад

    That Floppy Disk wall looks awesome!

  • @catto24
    @catto24 Год назад +1

    that floppy disk wallpaper is just perfect

  • @DeepfriedChips
    @DeepfriedChips Год назад +2

    Waking up and immediately watching a 40 minute video about a failed zip drive competitor

  • @billyhatcher643
    @billyhatcher643 Год назад +1

    im glad u didnt do the setup first cause that was hilarious to see why all of that cool free stuff was on the drive to begin with

  • @boydpukalo8980
    @boydpukalo8980 Год назад

    I am working on converting an external parallel port Sparq drive into SCSI by taking the EZFlyer 230 SCSI bridgeboard from a donor external drive and replacing the Sparq's parallel port to IDE bridgeboard! I have the 2x external SCSI EZ135, 2 x external SCSI EZFlyer, Sparq, and 2x external SyJet and 1 x internal SyJet drives, as well as internal 55 & 88 MB SCSI drives in my collection, all NOS within the last 2 years. Back in the 1990's I owned the revolutionary Iomega Zip and Jaz drives, but dont remember Syquest. Floppy to zip was liberating back then before USB thumbdrives existed. Really cool video.

  • @blainepalmerza
    @blainepalmerza Год назад

    Awesome video, Michael!

  • @GikeroMage
    @GikeroMage Год назад +2

    I bought a new one in 2005. For $20ish. It came with 2 extra disks. I installed the drive in my brother's Micron desktop and we put Stacraft on one of the disks. Pretty sure we stopped using that PC before this SparQ drive had a chance to fail.

  • @DavidWonn
    @DavidWonn Год назад +2

    I'm glad I somehow managed to skip the zip drive era, keeping most important things in floppy sized chunks until I used a single CD-RW as the floppy replacement around the millennium. Being on dial-up probably helped in this transition era, ironically.

  • @thedungeondelver
    @thedungeondelver Год назад +1

    That drum sting from the HEAT launcher is sampled from "Scarecrow" by Ministry off their _Psalm 69_ release (1992 I believe?)

  • @LordFalon
    @LordFalon Год назад +2

    I don't know what you are talking about, these things were great! I still have both my internal & external drives and about 20+ disks some still new in shrink wrap. :)

    • @LordFalon
      @LordFalon Год назад +1

      Also, they had 2 versions of the external, SCSI and Parallel port.

  • @MillwalltheCat
    @MillwalltheCat Год назад +1

    Used the 44MB and 88MB SyQuest many years ago, along with a Mac IIcx and an A4 B&W monitor.

  • @beepyshenanigans
    @beepyshenanigans Год назад +1

    cool, i’ve always liked retro storage, and love your vids❤❤❤

  • @briannacluck5494
    @briannacluck5494 Год назад +1

    Zip drive was my media format of choice all the way up to 2006. It perfectly served its needed purpose for me, which was a place to keep all my roms as backups in case my computer got a virus. I would have lost my mind at the thought of a 1 GB sparq cartridge!

  • @VSigma725
    @VSigma725 Год назад +1

    I have an external parallel SparQ drive and I was extremely surprised when it actually worked, given I got it at a flea market of all places.

  • @richardestes6499
    @richardestes6499 Год назад +1

    It's funny you mention the partial acquisition by EMC. They were acquired by Dell about eight years ago.

  • @ltxr9973
    @ltxr9973 Год назад

    Extremely nostalgic, my family had an even older cartridge drive when I was a kid. I think these were removable harddrives with something between 100-300MB which was a lot back then. Like these 2:46. I was always told how important it was to unmount them before swapping cartridges and nowadays I know how the worked so that makes perfect sense. If you look at modern HDDs the whole idea of removable hard drives seems alien 😁.

  • @branhicks
    @branhicks Год назад

    That space banana video was on our Gateway 2000 restore cd for our 486/66. I haven't seen that in 30 years

  • @savagesarethebest7251
    @savagesarethebest7251 Год назад +1

    I am terribly fascinated by the fact that this old 98 machine is a good bit more snappier than a completely new computer...

  • @DankRedditMemes
    @DankRedditMemes Год назад +11

    Pretty sure what killed the ZIP Drive more was that it was a proprietary format, unlike the floppy and the CD, so OEMs never included them in computers.

    • @AnotherAustin-z7b
      @AnotherAustin-z7b 2 месяца назад

      They at least came in Compaq's (my family personally had one) and Bringus Studio found one stock in a Dell Dimension he tore town for his computer from Counterstrike video.

    • @stuartcastle2814
      @stuartcastle2814 Месяц назад

      CD was defiantly a proprietary format (still is), and I am fairly certain the licensing fees for the drive manufacturers was significant. What killled zip was partly the reputation damage caused by the click of death and the fact that cd discs were both larger and significantly cheaper than Zip disks..

    • @Lyriox
      @Lyriox 2 дня назад

      Growing up, our family's Packard-Bell had the optional ZIP drive. My mom originally got the computer to go to college in the 90s.

    • @stuartcastle2814
      @stuartcastle2814 День назад

      @ During my degreee, I built my own PC, and had an IDE zip drive and a cd-re writer in it. I used the zip drive to work on stuff at home and Uni (some of out computing labs had IDE zip drives), using the CD-Rewriter for larger projects.. I did make sure that I had backups.

  • @RetroGamerOG_
    @RetroGamerOG_ Год назад +3

    Zip drives are cool! I use them all the time and I used a file zipper on my computer but I never heard of this

  • @retroshitposts9807
    @retroshitposts9807 Год назад

    22:19 I love spotting the default Borland ObjectWindows checkmark in the wild.

  • @JMoss_8374
    @JMoss_8374 Год назад +1

    Hi, i viewed the video where you activated plus digital media with the phone. It still works??

  • @kale.online
    @kale.online Год назад +1

    Syquest may be outdated but someone is renewing those SSL certs

  • @Valery0p5
    @Valery0p5 Год назад +2

    The problem is not that they were pointing on removable magnetic storage, the problem was that they were pointing at non standard magnetic removable discs, without the read and write unit.
    We often forget it but the first Ipod had an hard drive in there, not flash memory.
    Once FireWire and then USB became popular, external drives did.

    • @JaredConnell
      @JaredConnell Год назад

      Who forgot the iPod had a hard drive? That was its main feature and all full sized iPods had them.

  • @dovix
    @dovix Год назад +4

    Fastest click on a video ever, cause MJD never disappoints 🎉

  • @barra352
    @barra352 Год назад +1

    I love how this video is barely about SparQ.

  • @QuertyQw33n
    @QuertyQw33n Год назад +5

    oh my goodness. I remember these. I used to use zip discs in middle and high school during the mid 2000s on my Braille Computer. (yes. There is such a thing.) I used to do my homework on it and transfer files to and from it and a standard desktop.

  • @Aeduo
    @Aeduo Год назад

    That background loading in on that memail thing wa slike the computer running cinebench, but it's the 90s.
    I love that everything makes noises and has its own silly UI style. It's so from its time. Very charming, but a lot of the software seems kinda cheap and crummy, although that drawing program actually looks competent.
    This had some real vargskelethor shareware madness vibes.

  • @TheStarscouts
    @TheStarscouts Год назад

    I love the floppy disk kind of wallpaper

  • @TexTom1981
    @TexTom1981 8 месяцев назад

    Syquest WAS the primary medium to send your publishing files to printers on at one time.

  • @badstate
    @badstate Год назад +2

    Zip drives had the exact same problem, where a damaged disk will break the drive, and then the drive will damage a new disc in the same way. I watched an office of five or six Zip drives go belly up in a single day because of this problem. Zip was a horrible, flawed design. LS120 was a much better design, based on the tried and true floppy format, and could even read and write regular floppies. And each LS120 disc held 20 more MB than a zip drive. Sadly it never really took off.

  • @cleverlyblonde
    @cleverlyblonde Год назад

    Oh yeah I remember all the software that would talk to you in the 90s. Speech was so novel they put it into _everything_ back then.

  • @KazyEXE
    @KazyEXE Год назад +3

    Wait, was this the click of death spreader? I could have sworn the ZipDisk had the "drive breaks disc so bad it breaks other drives" thing.

    • @EnigmaticLucas
      @EnigmaticLucas Год назад +5

      The Zip disk click of death had two forms.
      The more common form only ruins the data structure and couldn’t spread to other drives. The less common form physically damaged the mylar and could spread to other drives.

  • @PeterRichardsandYoureNot
    @PeterRichardsandYoureNot 19 дней назад

    I had a syquest removable 44 meg drive on my Apple ][gs for my bulletin board. You are absolutely right about the delicate nature of their stuff. I had one cartridge go out because the contractors working on my mom’s house didn’t seal off the room they were in and a little bit of gypsum dust got into my room. Scratched the platter and good bye data. Ug.

  • @hkkelvinlee
    @hkkelvinlee 5 месяцев назад

    I bought an external SparQ for use with my notebook (TI branded and Acer-made with whopping 75Mhz Pentium chip). The notebook has only 1.2G HD, which was big for notebook at the time but never adequate. Adding a SparQ (via Parallel port I think) with multi-1G cartridges was like a God send. I actually bought more cartridges when SyQuest went under. Pity the drive itself failed like 1 year later with many spare cartridges left unused. With hindsight, SparQ is technically problematic. The cartridge is an actual hard drive with spinning disc. Putting it into cartridge means it is semi-opened design, allowing dust to get in inevitably. Real HD is sealed for a reason. Accumulated dust eventually will kill your drive and/or cartridge. Matter of time really.

  • @near5148
    @near5148 Год назад +3

    Your videos are so good

  • @vwestlife
    @vwestlife Год назад

    SparQ was a competitor to the 1 GB Iomega Jaz drive (later increased to 2 GB). SyQuest's direct competitor to the Zip drive was the EZ135, which held 135 MB as its name suggests. Later it was renamed EZFlyer and the capacity was increased to 230 MB.

  • @TheYoungestCollector
    @TheYoungestCollector Год назад +1

    What happened to the DVD drive in the 98 pc

    • @MichaelMJD
      @MichaelMJD  Год назад +1

      I had to swap it with the drive in the custom built 2000s PC for the Windows Home Server video.

  • @DJGeeks
    @DJGeeks Год назад

    Do you guys remember the jaz disk. I used the zip and jaz disk. It was primarily used for video editing. Back in the day

  • @jodajackson4489
    @jodajackson4489 Год назад

    Yeah, I had a Sparq drive, the internal EIDE version, and it failed. Syquest was still in operation then and sorted the issue but the refurbished unit eventually failed too. No wonder they went out of business.

  • @shibolinemress8913
    @shibolinemress8913 Год назад

    That island scene looks like Johnny Castaway! 😊

  • @dexgaming6394
    @dexgaming6394 Год назад

    9:02 I like to see "fully functional" in quotes.

  • @truefatesshtposts3628
    @truefatesshtposts3628 Год назад

    Watching this during school

  • @gbresaleking
    @gbresaleking 8 месяцев назад

    As a teenager mom bought us a new pc and it had a zip drive built into it, she also bought me a home minidisc player that came with the portable minidisc player too , haha great times

  • @punboleh7081
    @punboleh7081 Год назад

    Given the time frame - would it have worked with OS/2 and Linux?
    I've used the Zip drive with both.
    I even had Linux installed on a Zip disk, so I could use any computer by just plugging in the external Zip drive and boot Linux from there.
    100MB was a bit tight, though, I never even tried to install X on it, for example. Installing Linux on a 1Gig disk would have been something else entirely.

  • @johnps1670
    @johnps1670 Год назад

    Always hoped mini disc was the next universal storage standard. Bought a zip drive, was great. Never had problems with it. Think they solved the design flaws at that time.

  • @SymbolicSplenetic
    @SymbolicSplenetic Год назад

    Holy crap, I remember Heat! Used it at my friends place and completely forgot about it since. AMA, but keep in mind I'll reply with "I don't know" or "I don't remember" exclusively.

  • @JarrodCoombes
    @JarrodCoombes Год назад

    That drive is a direct competitor the Jaz drive, not the Zip drive. The Jaz was also 1Gb and hard plattered like that one. Later Iomega also made a 2Gb Jaz drive.

  • @AlexanderKurtz
    @AlexanderKurtz Год назад

    Ohh, i had one ZIP-Drive
    for my Amiga1200 back in days, using the IDE-Port, for better Transfer data between PC and my A1200

  • @maxamuscrasious3047
    @maxamuscrasious3047 Год назад +2

    I kinda miss the days when even the most basic program had to MULTIMEDIA for the sake of MULTIMEDIAING in your face.

  • @Windows-Archive
    @Windows-Archive 5 месяцев назад

    What were some of the design flaws mentioned in the video?

  • @bbowman105
    @bbowman105 Год назад +1

    Notice how the shipping protector instructions are only readable after they have been executed.

  • @martinitime1975
    @martinitime1975 11 месяцев назад

    I was in line at the post office to send mine for repair when I got the news that Syquest had gone under

  • @troyBORG
    @troyBORG Год назад

    I know my school had a Zip Drive for our School Yearbook to store all the pictures when they sent it off to be printed.

  • @WakandaForever1776
    @WakandaForever1776 Год назад

    I wonder if you can mod a z64 game backup device for the N64, that used zip disks with this drive?

  • @bramvandenbroeck5060
    @bramvandenbroeck5060 Год назад

    36:10 That is something i hate when you buy a specific item, and they are trying to sell you the item you just bought. Is it not enough that i bought your product already??

  • @SoraHjort
    @SoraHjort Год назад

    Hope you cover other media. Like MO Drives, which were a quite odd mix of magnetic and optical tech.

  • @danieljm1234
    @danieljm1234 Год назад +1

    I just noticed the floppy drive backdrop

  • @stephanieiwaniuk6088
    @stephanieiwaniuk6088 Год назад +150

    Hello everyone!

  • @boydpukalo8980
    @boydpukalo8980 Год назад

    St about 1.4 megabytes per second? Seems slow even for that period?

  • @oldgrizzlygamer
    @oldgrizzlygamer Год назад +1

    Frankly I liked the LS120 drives, could use both 120MB disk or read regular 3.5" floppies as well.

    • @Thedoomslayer2029
      @Thedoomslayer2029 Месяц назад

      I have both Panasonic Super Disk digital cameras, and I agree that the ls-120 is a neat format. If I were an adult in the 90s, I would've definitely bought a drive for my PC.

  • @kuroinekonya
    @kuroinekonya Год назад +1

    who else been binging the old vids waiting for a new post?

  • @ShumanGore
    @ShumanGore Год назад

    out of curiosity, what's that cd-like icon in the taskbar tray?

  • @PinkAgaricus
    @PinkAgaricus Год назад

    Could that (Limit 50) be in reference to the amount of people who can win a lifetime supply of cartridges in a month (if they did a winner(s) per day)?
    I know that (50) doesn't make sense because a month has 30-31 (or 28-29 for February, depending on if it's a leap year or not). Okay either way that 50 doesn't make sense.
    I've seen those unclarified limits at a certain supermarket on one particular sale. Yea it's the Friday Sale at Safeway when they have the "6 pk of 24 oz Pepsi on sale for 2/$5 (Limit 2)". They really need to clarify it on the sale sign without the shopper going to the checkout person to ask is it 2 items per family/person or 2 instances of the sale price.

  • @markshade8398
    @markshade8398 Год назад

    Just a bit of different opinion to share.
    I think SyQuest existed first with their physical but removable hard disks. And they weren't originally competing with Zip Drive. Also, they weren't a failure, they just weren't the overall winer.
    And the SparQ was a very late entry to the game.

  • @Tahngarthor
    @Tahngarthor 9 месяцев назад

    Would this one have failed though? It was higher capacity than a CD.

  • @EBTheOriginalMaster
    @EBTheOriginalMaster Год назад

    The bit where you told the voiceover person on the Howdy program to shut up, 😂

  • @bojinglebells
    @bojinglebells Год назад

    Zip was definitely meant to be a floppy alternative, this (and Iomega's own Jaz drive) was meant to be something else; basically an external HDD system that was cartridge based (far more capacity, also much better performance). Zip and floppy's purpose was replaced by USB flash drives and SD cards, SparQ's (and Jaz's) purpose was replaced by external hard drives (particularly USB3.0 and later, Thunderbolt based solutions, and the now defunct eSATA/Firewire), and of course cheap, burnable CD media would hurt both in the meantime

  • @MikinessAnalog
    @MikinessAnalog Год назад

    As for the opinions of those experiencing use of these, it boils down to expectations & what it was used for (& how often).
    Same mentality applies to plasma TVs & laser TVs.

  • @linuxstreamer8910
    @linuxstreamer8910 Год назад

    is that rain? sounds like a electric kettle

  • @jakemeals
    @jakemeals Год назад

    I had 750MB 3 pack disks from ZIP. I thought zip drives would replace floppy drives in the future.

  • @Fortuna1
    @Fortuna1 Год назад +1

    Can be a great storage system, but for other storage systems, can be a great into the next generation (XP-7)

  • @thedave1771
    @thedave1771 Год назад

    Did you send in the warranty card?