How practical would an Iomega Zip drive have been?

[hawkangel]

I think the idea of a Dreamcast Iomega Zip drive as an add on is awesome from a hacking POV (I mourn for the photos of that unrealised concept that could have been) but at the same time it makes me wonder why they would release one when the popularity of burning CDs and USB storage had just started in the late 90s. Realistically, what would have a Dreamcast Zip drive been used for?

[dark]

Dreamcast could go online, zip drive could have been a stand in for a HDD, allowing the user to download larger pictures, movies, DLC for games etc. in connection with e-mailing people or just browsing the web. Could also have helped the DC do more non-game utilities, like act as a word processor or something. I don't think any of this would have saved sega, and neither did SOJ's marketing department, which apparently killed the idea of the zip drive shortly after it was demoed by sega's engineering department.

[Londinium]

Dreamcast could go online, zip drive could have been a stand in for a HDD, allowing the user to download larger pictures, movies, DLC for games etc. in connection with e-mailing people or just browsing the web. Could also have helped the DC do more non-game utilities, like act as a word processor or something. I don't think any of this would have saved sega, and neither did SOJ's marketing department, which apparently killed the idea of the zip drive shortly after it was demoed by sega's engineering department.

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm 99% certain Sega was trying to make the Dreamcast a PC. I wouldn't be surprised if they saw the writing on the wall years before everyone else, after all, many people did consider Sega the mad scientist of gaming...

I mean, think about it, keyboard and mouse peripherals, a zip drive, they wanted to make this a PC, but the Dreamcast's failure put and end to that.

[megavolt85]

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm 99% certain Sega was trying to make the Dreamcast a PC.

dreamcast is based on PC

[Londinium]

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm 99% certain Sega was trying to make the Dreamcast a PC.

dreamcast is based on PC

Everything is based on PC
We are PCs

[megavolt85]

Everything is based on PC

not all, for example megadrive and saturn, are not like PC

We are PCs

this is technically impossible, how can we be similar to what we ourselves have created

[Londinium]

Everything is based on PC

not all, for example megadrive and saturn, are not like PC

We are PCs

this is technically impossible, how can we be similar to what we ourselves have created

I was trying to make a joke outta this, but I can't figure out the punchline at this point

[SG6K]

Back in the day my brother got deep into using zip drives and discs; they were pretty useful in light of how temperamental CD burning software (on Windows 95/98) was. But zip discs were prone to corruption and faults and weird issues too, and didn't have a large window of time to truly shine.

The DC zip drive add-on was doomed before it was even announced IMO. A nice idea but too little too late using expensive tech that really wasn't that great.

[pcwzrd13]

FYI, the Zip Drive had a USB port which could be used for eternal flash/HDD storage so there were multiple options for storage.

I wrote an article on the Zip Drive a while back which explains what it would be useful for:

https://dreamcastlive.net/blogs/post/th ... ibilities/

[Caspian]

Saving data from the internet, DLCs for games and possibly some support for homebrew development were amongst the rumored functionalities that would be enabled by the ZIP drive. Also the additional ports mentioned by pcwzrd13 were indeed rumoured and these would further expand Dreamcast's connectivity options.

At that point in time USB storage indeed existed but I remember it came at much lower capacity than the Iomega disks and at a higher cost per MB also. So at the time the peripheral made some sense from a functional point of view. However it would not do much to address SEGA's main challenge which was to enable project Dreamcast to produce enough cash flow to keep the company afloat. So it remained a concept and no further resources were allocated to its production. With more financial success I think this peripheral would have found its way to the shelves.