>> Aside from the noise message, I had no trouble with my zip drive.
>> (Well, almost.  There's cabling - what _possessed_ them to use that
>> bizarre nonstandard pinout, and just _try_ to find cables to hook it
>> up to a scsi chain that ends with a D"B"-50. [...])

> If I remember correctly, it's a DB-25,

It is.  The zip drive actually has two DB25s on it, one "in" and one
"out".

> and you'll find an appropriate adapter cable at any Macintosh shop

Hardly.  The drive comes with a cable designed to connect it to a
Macintosh; it's male DB25 on each end, but is _not_ symmetric: flip the
cable end-to-end and it won't work.

> (unless, it turns out, you own a Macintosh, in which case you need a
> fairly rare DB25-to-DB25 *SCSI* cable; note that a 25-wire serial
> cable *won't* do).

Why not?

> Or ask any friend with a Macintosh; disks bought from a Mac place
> inevitably come with a "free" DB25-to-Centronics-50 cable, but you
> only need ONE of those per Macintosh...

Except what I need is a cable to connect it to a (so-called) DB-50.
Not a Centronics-50.

What I know works: the iomega-provided cable, to a DB25 F-F
gender-bender designed for RS232 (this is why I ask why serial 25-wire
cables won't do), to a Macintosh-to-Centronics scsi cable, to a piece
of ribbon cable with two Centronics sockets on it (presumably taken
from a dead drive at some point in the past), to a Centronics-to-DB50
cable.  We've found a shop that is willing to do custom cables, and are
having them wire up an appropriate cable, based on handing them the
above mess and saying "here's your reference for the wiring".

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu