Warning: my shop teacher in Bend told me to keep a Zip disk drive running, and 20 years later he was right

Michael Nelson · 2026-10-16T21:30:04.226111+00:00

Back in 2004 my shop teacher Mr. Alvarez in Bend, Oregon told me to never trash a working Zip drive because some old machines only boot from them. I laughed and tossed mine in a box anyway. Dug it out 3 moves later, hooked it to a Pentium 2 rig I got for $15 at a garage sale, and the thing loaded a diagnostic tool no modern PC would touch. Anyone else still keeping a Zip drive or am I the only one with a stack of 100MB disks?

🐿️Pinecone Attack

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Warning: my shop teacher in Bend told me to keep a Zip disk drive running, and 20 years later he was right | Ancient Tech Leftovers - Pinecone Attack