installing a 4 year old zip drive onto my new computer... few questions.

[MrBaseball]

I took my an old 100meg zip drive off of the familys old computer which was a p2 300. The zip came new with the pc 4 years ago.
I put it into my 3.5 inch bay and plugged in the power cords and the long skinny thing on the ribbons. Set the little switch thing on the back of the zip to master and fired up the computer. Well I dont know much about computers so when the light on the zip drive came on when I booted it up, I was like "hell yeah". Next thing I know i get a messgae saying theres a "floppy drive error 40" or something like that. "press f1 to continue" so I do. I got to my desktop and tried to load something off of a floppy but it says floppy not accessable even though I have a floppy in the drive. So I unplugged the power cord to the zip drive and the long skinny thing on the ribbon and booted back up. Floppy works fine...
1) The long skinny thing on the ribbon is first going to the floppy, then the next long skinny thing (slid down on the ribbon) is plugged in to the zip so should I try and switch those long skinny things?
2) Sorry for not making to much since. If you know what I mean about this, please try to help me out. Whats the long skinny thing on the ribbon called anyway?
3) IF I ever figure this out, will I have to buy the zip software to make the drive work or can I download it somewhere?
Thanks for reading

[jray]

It sounds like you're using the wrong cable; the zip drive should connect to the same cable as either your hard drive or your cdrom drive. If you connect it on the same cable as your hard disk, most likely you'll need to set the zip as slave; if you use the cdrom cable, look on the back of the cdrom to see if it is set master or slave, set the zip to the other (one must be master, the other slave). Good luck..

[MrBaseball]

Thanks jray, I'll check that out when I get home today... any more suggestions anyone? Anything and everything is welcome.

[Andy_L]

Jray is right, the ZIP drive goes onto your cable with the harddisk, or better, CDROM. Check the connector on the zip to make sure no pins are bent, then make sure your floppy drive is plugged onto the cable on the end after the twist in the cable (put it on the last connector) If you have Win 98 or Millenium, you will not need to add drivers, i dont know about Win 2000, but Win NT and Win 95 need drivers from Iomega. Let us know how it turns out, and if you have any trouble (I know I have fought with the Zip drives before, lol)

[MrBaseball]

yeah thanks, you guys were right. I connected it on the same ribbon as the cd-rom. But one thing I thought was odd... I dont have it sent on Master or Slave because nither worked... I set it back on its original "factory setting" and it works. I downloaded the software from iomega.co and it came with drivers. I have win98 so I guess I didn't need the drivers but oh well. Thanks again.