MAINLINE MODELER

[Pizzaparty]

I worked as a computer tech right out of high school during the height of the storage wars and saw that all quickly dissolve into a thumb drive. Now physical media is effectively dead these days. Zip drives will hold a special place in hell for me

Enough thread drift from me - Aaron - do any of the mainline modelers have diagrams for the 49er? I can find the locomotive plans all day long but the cars are proving to be elusive

[chessie system fan]

They don't.  But isn't that a betterment heavyweight train? Most, if not all, Pullman heavyweights are done in their as-built configuration. Maybe you can extrapolate from there.

[sirenwerks]

When a "zip drive" was mentioned by Chris what came to  my mind is Iomega ZIP drive from about 30 years ago. I was wondering why someone would revive that stroage format.   I guess I'm getting old . . . 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive  Basically like a high capacity floppy disk.



I never heard a USB flash drive, memory stick, or thumb drive (to name a few) being called a "zip drive". Learned something new.

If you're old, I must be too, because I thought of the same thing.

[sd80mac]

Does anyone here have the Mainline Modeler all time issue zip drive?  Just wondering how the search is on it and if you can actually find stuff using it.

I have the Mainline Modeler Magazine Collection from the C&O Historical Society and canconfirm that it is a collection of PDF versions of each magazine from 1980 to 2006. There is no search function. Your bet option is to use the Railroad Magazine Index found at https://www.rrmagazineindex.org/.

[peteski]

If you're old, I must be too, because I thought of the same thing.

Yup, I'm old, but that's relative. On a positive note, when I'm playing with my little trains I feel much younger. 
If you want to hear something funny, I still have the original ZIP drive with parallel interface, and several ZIP discs.  You never know when you will run into some old disk with important info you want to upload to your current computer. 

[pmpexpress]

... I still have the original ZIP drive with parallel interface, and several ZIP discs.  You never know when you will run into some old disk with important info you want to upload to your current computer. 

Pete,

For the reason that you mentioned, like you, along with a bunch of 100, 250, and 750 MB discs, I still have several of my old Iomega Zip external (Firewire, SCSI, and USB) and 5.25" internal (IDE and SCSI) drives on hand.

[peteski]

Pete,

For the reason that you mentioned, like you, along with a bunch of 100, 250, and 750 MB discs, I still have several of my old Iomega Zip external (Firewire, SCSI, and USB) and 5.25" internal (IDE and SCSI) drives on hand.

My tower PC has both 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drives, CD/DVD-RW drive and dual boots to  Win98SE and Win XP.   

[nkalanaga]

"Zip Drive" is an old term for the portable USB drive, from back when they were new.  I haven't heard the term in years.

[Chris333]

So I was just going to buy this and the shipping is $14 bucks for a USB stick.   

[nkalanaga]

They're thick enough that they can't be stuffed in an envelope and sent as a letter.  They almost have to have a box, so take package postage.

[Chris333]

I can ship a box for $8 bucks.