That plastic piece on a Zip disk

[Del March]

What is the purpose of the prism-ish piece of plastic on the underside corner
of a Zip disk? It doesn't seem to move, and I've tried to remove one, just to
see if it was some sort of write-protect, but it's pretty well stuck in there.
So what's it for?

[Mike Rosenberg]

Del March <delmarch@aol.comBITEME> wrote:

> What is the purpose of the prism-ish piece of plastic on the underside
> corner of a Zip disk?

What is the purpose of posting this question to _this_ newsgroup?

--
Mike Rosenberg

<http://www.macconsult.com>
<http://bogart-tribute.net>

[Tacit]

>What is the purpose of the prism-ish piece of plastic on the underside corner

>of a Zip disk? It doesn't seem to move, and I've tried to remove one, just
>to see if it was some sort of write-protect, but it's pretty well stuck in
>there. So what's it for?

The drive detects the disk that way, by shining an LED and looking for the
reflection.

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[forge]

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:08:54 -0400, [email]mike@POSTTOGROUP.inva[/email]lid (Mike
Rosenberg) wrote:

>> What is the purpose of the prism-ish piece of plastic on the underside
>> corner of a Zip disk?

>
>What is the purpose of posting this question to _this_ newsgroup?

'Cuz his server doesn't carry
storage.disk.iomega-zip.random-silly-questions?

[David C.]

[email]tacitr@aol.com[/email] (Tacit) writes:

>
> The drive detects the disk that way, by shining an LED and looking
> for the reflection.

I think it also identifies the disc's capacity.

IIRC, the Zip-250's lens is red (the Zip-100's is white). I don't
know what color a Zip-750 disc is.

-- David