But Why?

Hey, some people like swimming, some like reading, some even like the Teletubbies, or shooting tennis balls from beer cans. I like pulling things apart. And I don't think that I'm alone in that. Oh, and after reading ntk and a random web page about the tyco videocam, I bought one of these cheapo black and white video cameras at a local toystore for £20. I already had a TV card so I could use my Amiga on the PC's monitor, so off I went...

First things first. I refuse to be responsible in *any way* if you break your zip drive. Mine was already half-broken, so I had nothing to lose. If you have difficulty in wiring a plug and stuff like that, don't even think about it.

What you will need:

• A flat-bladed screwdriver or similar implement.

So, off we go then.

Comparison of picture quality with and without extra lens
	Original image - no extra lens on camera. The camera is sitting on its (supplied) tripod, so it's not as if I'm doing some sort of funky motion blur effect
	With the added lens. As you can see, the difference is quite noticeable. We're still in black and white, and it's still not wonderful, but it sure is a damn sight better! You can even see that the light coloured blob on the right is in fact the carpet...

Cool. The camera works! Now for some fun.

Step One - opening the case.

Warning - do *not* open the case by pulling off the front. You'll break it like I did. No, take my advice, and take it from the side. As you can see, there are two slots in the side, just wide enough for your screwdriver/thingy.

Push gently into these holes, pull the top section upwards, and the side of the case will open more or less on its own. Don't forget that the front bit is separate - pulling on this will not work!

A little bit of jiggling on the other side (it's slightly different but much the same principle. There's nothing much to break, so don't worry too much.) will allow you to remove the top. I discovered my wonderful extra lens at this point, so it should look a little better from now on.

	A view of the front section still attached after the cover has been removed. This section is held on by two plastic pegs moulded into the base, and two tabs with holes in in the front section. There is also a plastic tab on the left hand side which secures the front bit to the top. (lighter grey against dark background). You'll notice that the right hand tab is broken - don't try to pull the front off first, boys and girls!  To remove the front panel, push the drive assembly back into the "loaded" position - it'll click into place and leave the plastic tabs at the front exposed. gently wiggle the front section downwards and forwards to remove.
	Zip drive with the lid off You can now see the main internals of the drive. The large silver circle at the top is the spindle which spins the disk when in use. It has a magnetic middle bit, presumably to keep the disk securely attached. You can just make out the two runners at the sides (the prominent black bits at the top, which run down the sides of the drive assembly). The light-coloured (gold in realworld-o-vision) bit just below the spindle is the head controller. The read/write head sticks out from the front of this.
	Removal of drive assembly Removal of the drive is easy - just unhook the springs from the front, pull up gently and remove the runners at the sides, and then lift. Pull out the two ribbon cables (one at the bottom left, and one at the top right) and then pull out the power cable (white cable, top right) from the main board. They'll go back in either way round, but they prefer one way to the other.  The smaller ribbon cable goes to the spindle, and I assume it controls the main motor. The second goes to the read/write head and controls the movement of the head as well as the reading and writing stuff.
	View of main board with drive removed This is where the limitations of the camera really start to show But hey. It was cheap. Perhaps a scanner may be a better bet next time...  Anyway, you can see the general layout of the board - there's a main processor chip on the right (the large black square) - this is labelled  MC68HC16Z1PV16 1E69W DXEA9532 so it appears to be a Motorola 68 series processor, manufactured 3rd quarter 1995.  There's two Hyundai ram chips at the bottom right of the picture, 70 ns, made 9526 (mid 95).  There's a sticker over two more chips in the middle - these are the Adaptec and NCR chips below. There's loads more to see, so I suggest opening your own Zip drive to have a closer look. in the meantime I'll show you some of the fun bits.
Close up of the NCR chip - NCR make lots of SCSI-related chips. This one is labelled  R9533 01977001 OSCAR IOMEGA XR00948	Adaptec are also well known for SCSI-related stuff, notably their SCSI cards for PCs. This one is labelled AIC-7110Q GKWA533PT 708311 D3-45 HONG KONG
	View of switch at front left God, it was a bugger trying to get this shot. Used a magnifying glass as a lens in the end...  Anyway, you can make out the two LED's at the top, and the pushbutton switch below them, labelled SW12. The front panel connects these LED's to the lights at the front of the drive with some funky light-guide bits of plastic. Very cunning. The switch assembly translates your horizontal push to a vertical one on this switch with another clever bit of bendy plastic/lever shenanigans.
	Horribly grainy shot of the LED light guides Oh well. They're two moulded bits of clear plastic. The light goes into from the bottom and they light up at the top. Fat fibre optics, as it were.
	Close up of the optical detector Ever wondered what the weird lensy thing on the bottom of Zip disks was for? Well, this little detector (to the left of the bottom chip) sits directly below it when your disk is inserted. There's two blobs which look like an led IR emitter/detector. I guess it's just a security/patent thing to stop people copying zip disks. There's no mechanism to realign the disk, and it's held pretty firmly by all the other alignment mechanisms, so God knows what this bit does. But I thought I'd show you it just to prove that the lensy thing does do something...
	Close up of resistor pack As this is a SCSI Zip drive, it needs a block of resistors for termination if it is the last SCSI device in the chain. And that's what these little beauties are for. They sit just next to the input SCSI socket, and I guess they are activated when you flick the "termination" switch on.
Drive Assembly in the "out" position	A few shots of the Zip drive with the drive assembly Why did they make the whole of the inside black? You can't see a goddamn thing. You can just make out a spring on the left which sorts out the "open the disk shutter" duties, but not much more. Oh well.
Drive assembly in the "in" position	Drive assembly with disk inserted

OK. Time for me to do something else. Hope you had fun!
Dead hardware welcomed : email me