Is my Power Mac 6500 Internal ZIP Drive a SCSI or IDE/ATA ?

It's SCSI.

From the 6500 Service Manual - "The expansion bay includes audio, data, and power connectors for adding a SCSI CD-ROM or other SCSI device. The bay is configured for 5.25-inch devices, but with modification to the carrier, a 3.5-inch SCSI device could be installed. In some computers, the bay may already be occupied by a Zip drive."

Years ago when I had a 6500, I removed the Zip drive & replaced it with a hard drive. This gave me the primary hard drive & a backup hard drive.

 Cheers, Tom

You can undoubtedly find a pulled SCSI Zip 100 at eBay, but because the SCSI models have been out of production for so long, it could be a high-mileage drive. There was a design flaw in early Zip drives that caused the infamous "click death" problem, which led to a class action lawsuit and subsequent settlement by Iomega. You might get a replacement drive installed that functions OK now, but goes bad within a short period of time. If your mother wants to keep the 6500 for a while, I'd suggest installing a 2-port USB 1.1 PCI card, which is supported from OS 8.6 on. USB 2.0 cards are multi-bus cards and aren't supported in the 6500 series. With the USB card installed, you could purchase a USB Zip 100 drive. I wouldn't recommend the USB Zip 250 drive (even though it can read Zip 100 disks), because it takes too long to reformat Zip 100 disks in it. Having USB ports on the 6500 would enable the use of many USB peripherals, such as flash drives (which are less expensive for data backup than Zip disks). A newer USB printer with pre-OS X drivers would also be an option. After installing the USB card, you'd need to install the USB drivers from the OS installer disk via a Custom Install or extract them from the System Software update tome using TomeViewer. If your mother's 6500 is running OS 9.0.x, you can download and run the OS 9.1 Update, after installing the USB card. The update installer should detect the USB card and load the appropriate USB drivers.

"Steve,

Jeff referred to the zip click of death. Here are a couple of resources for diagnostic software and information.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,9378-page,1/article.html

http://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm

Googling will offer no shortage of link as well.

Jim

Tom (Texas Mac Man) says its SCSI.
Jeff says its SCSI.
Jim (Appaloosa Mac Man) says its SCSI.
Grant says its SCSI:

The 6500 and 5500 family use a motherboard with a "Big Connector" across the back. There are only pins for one IDE Bus and it only supports one device. (Macs before the Rev B G3 cannot support more than one IDE hard drive per IDE cable.) There are also pins for one SCSI Bus, and it supports seven devices in addition to the motherboard controller.

Yes, the Power Mac 6500s that shipped with Zip drives had a SCSI Zip drive, because the onboard IDE controller is only used for the internal hard drive and doesn't support master/slave configuration of dual drives. The internal 12x or 24x CD-ROM drive is also a SCSI device. I own (2) 6500s and (3) 6400s (identical minitower), so I'm 100% certain.

steve,

I wish you could have helped me unload my trailer an hour ago. I would have given you ten for your trouble. If you have a university near by, find out how they sell their surplus computers. Many schools sell individual zip drives for $5 and auction off a mixed box of 50 IDE and SCSI drives for $15. Just test the drive before losing your chance to return it.

BTW, for quick visual identification, the IDE zip uses the full size molex power connector and the SCSI has to use the smaller power lead because the 50 pin connector takes up more room on the controller board.

Ji˜m