How to access a Zip drive using an Apple Watch

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member
Recap: Iomega introduced its removable floppy disk storage system in the mid-90s. While its medium-to-high-capacity disks were highly coveted, the format never became popular enough to replace the standard 3.5-inch floppy disk. In the early 2000s, USB flash drives and rewritable optical disks gave Zip disks a proper send-off.

Just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. That’s more or less the take that most will have on YouTube user napabar’s recent experiment to access a Zip drive from an Apple Watch.

The YouTuber pulled off the feat by utilizing Rumpus, an FTP and WebDAV server with a built-in web file manager. In short, the software allows you to access folders or drives on your computer via a remote web browser. So long as the device you are using has a basic web browser, it should work.

But the Apple Watch doesn’t have a web browser, you say?

As napabar highlights, watchOS 5 can display HTML content when sent in an iMessage or via e-mail so maybe Rumpus’ web file manager would work in that interface. Sure enough, he sent himself an iMessage with a link to the shared drive and it worked. He was able to view the contents of the shared data on the Zip disk, create new folders and even rename and delete content at will.

Again, this is far from practical but is neat nevertheless for the simple fact that it marries new and old technology in a way that most would never have thought to even try.

Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web.

Masthead credit: Apple Watch by Kira Budaieva

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Man, I remember having this in a few system builds. Heck, I even threw in an IOmega Jaz drive on a SCSI rig.

Too bad Zip disks were prone to the click-of-death.
 
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