Hi Ian, Thanks a lot for your help to get this letter strait.
Will see you in the next few days in Starlight. Regards Franz > ? No. > 1. You bought it on eBay? yes > 2. Does one "mount a drive"? it should mean disk > 3. What is a "generic" adapter? I am confused amongst your original, > the > first replacement you bought and the various "generic" adapters mentioned. I was not sure but I were thinking, if it isn't an original Zip adapter but does the same function it could be called generic. Same like with drugs, it seems like that it can't be used in that sense. It could be called a "not original Zip adapter" That below is what I have send out. Hi all, I would like to contribute some new information about the "click of death" of a Zip drive. Eighteen months ago I bought an external 100 MB Zip from eBay. Clever me, I connected it to the normal Thai 220 Volt power outlet, thus killing the Zip and the original 110V adapter. I went to the local distributor of Zip in Thailand, D Computer. They said that they could not repair it in Thailand, would have to send the drive to the US and I would have to pay $90 for that. I had bought the drive for $20 plus $15 for shipping! What a joke to ask for $90 to repair it! Instead, I bought another two Zip drives (in order to have a spare if/when something went wrong) on eBay from the same seller. Prior to the arrival of the drives, I bought an adapter, not an original Zip but it had 5W output. I will now call the drives Z1 and Z2, to keep track of the different performances. With Z1 I could mount the disk and it worked; Z2 had, from the beginning, a clicking sound and didn't mount the disk. I have seen some info on lists and from discussion groups about the clicking and was thinking the seller had sold me a bad Zip so I put it away in a cupboard. Luckily I had bought two drives. After eighteen months, the Z1 started to give problems: no clicking sound but it would not mount the disk. The orange light blinked quickly for about 15 seconds and then it went into a slow blinking mode and it remained like that. I went again to D Computer and took both drives with me. After a while , the technician came back with the drives and said to my surprise that both of them were working, also I didn't have to pay anything. I came home and connected Z1. It worked for one disk. When I inserted another disk, the same problem again. It ended up with in that fast and slow, blinking orange light. I connected Z2, the same clicking sound as before. I went back to D Computer with both drives, some of my disks and my adapter. The same technician called me into his workshop, where he demonstrated with his equipment that both drives were working. He inserted my disks. They worked also. He connected with my adapter and, there we go, Z1 was blinking and Z2 was clicking. The problem was found. I asked if he could sell me an original Zip adapter, no, he sold complete sets only. So, I went to the computer shopping plaza where I had bought my adapter before, to find a new one, in the hope that it will work. I had my drives with me and I tried 5 adapters on both drives. None of them worked. I went upstairs to a Mac dealer with a repair shop and asked for an original Zip adapter. He didn't have one but he started to go through some boxes of old stuff and came out with an adapter, half the size of an original Zip adapter but it had the correct Watt output. The connection didn't fit, he took that one from my adapter. He connected and both my drives worked, no more blinking, no more clicking. I can't explain why Z1 worked for eighteen months with that adapter and then stopped and Z2 never worked with it at all. I would like to put a question mark on all the reports on the web that the "click of death" is that of a dying disk. Magnetism from monitor or power supply was also mentioned as possibly distorting the function of the drive and start this click of death syndrome. Could it be possible that an original Zip adapter can loose it's Watt output and change the performance of the drive? Anybody out there with this famous click of death problem should try first to change the adapter as, in my case, it was the cause of clicking and non- performance on two different Zip drives. Franz Bangkok -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
