As far as I know, the 'Zip drives' were all plastic mock-ups, and the development itself didn't get much further than that.
Why didn't the dreamcast start out with the zip drive built in? Sega had an online strategy in place. so why wouldn't the system ship from day one with a device for saving downloaded stuff from seganet?
They would have had to be licensed from Iomega and Sega would have to pay them for every DC produced. Also Zip drives are insanely slow.
Not to mention rather dodgy. They're not as unreliable as regular floppy disks, but I've had more than my fair share of troubles with data getting corrupted on Zip disks.
its probably best they didnt release it, caues i think around that time zip drives were fading out, in fact i dont even think anyone really uses them anymore.
Actually, a lot of developers used them to store code. They were cheaper than DAT tapes. If you're looking for proto games, DAT tapes, Zip disks and hard drives are the places to find them.
exactly my point. I was using zip for GIS stuff less than 3 years ago. Also, zip disks were and are a lot cheaper than the many "save game storage devices" out then and now. Zip disks are definately reliable and fast enough when they are sized at less than 250mb. Also Iomega saw the writting on the wall, how restrictive could the license fee have been at the time.
Not to doubt you PA, but every VMU MP3 player I ever saw was a mock up. Never knew of any working units of any sort. -hl718
It may very well be a mockup. I got it in a box of stuff that was supposed to be thrown out. It really is amazing what gets thrown away in this industry, things that would fetch thousands on ebay are haphazardly thrown in everyday trash cans.
A number of Zip dev kits were made and shipped to developers. Each was fully working. At the time, Iomega was making a BIG push to try and get into the video game market. Most developers messed around with the Zip drive as a big scratch disc for work data. Early demos touted its ability to push data by streaming video off the disc. The unit was basically a standard IDE Zip drive in a case that connected to the side port on the DC. It could not run by itself, it needed a GD in the DC to boot the system. Along those same lines there was a PS2 build of Unreal Tournament that loaded custom maps off a USB Zip Drive. Sadly, that build was never released to the public. -hl718
Quite true! But when you ask for the items "they" are preparing to get thrown away, that is when the items suddenly regain value to "them"...
Indeed, were there Katanas with the Zip drive built in, or was it just a stand alone unit that connected in to the Katana?
Bump from beyond the grave! hl718 called it, its just a mock up. It seems as if the minijack is just glued to the top of an empty vmu. As far as i can tell, there isn't any circuitry inside. It does leave me with a cool set of dreamcast branded ear buds tho. I assume those are functional.
Here are some pics of the mp3 player: http://www.dreamcastgallery.com/dc/gallery.asp?selected_proto_id=732 And the zip disc drive: http://www.dreamcastgallery.com/dc/gallery.asp?selected_proto_id=707
