Were those ever open to manufacturing by companies other than Iomega?
I don't know much about the history of Iomega Zip Drives, but I find it interesting that in Japan MO Drives [1] were the winning format for that storage capacity bracket, and MO disks and drives were manufactured by a number of companies, much like floppy disks, not just one. I wonder why the same didn't happen in the West.
There was a predecessor to the Zip Drive that could do 120 MB. I’m blanking on what it’s called. My friend who was into MD data was into those first, then Iomega killed them.
Interestingly that article says Iomega was working in these five fore the Zip drive and abandoned the idea for Zip, others picked it up and ran with it.
But the article asserts they came out in 1997 - with no citation, and my friend had moved by 1996 so I think that date is off by a year or so. Though given where he worked it’s theoretically possible someone have him a prerelease version as a developer prototype.
Were those ever open to manufacturing by companies other than Iomega?
I don't know much about the history of Iomega Zip Drives, but I find it interesting that in Japan MO Drives [1] were the winning format for that storage capacity bracket, and MO disks and drives were manufactured by a number of companies, much like floppy disks, not just one. I wonder why the same didn't happen in the West.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_drive