UltraBay Zip Drive for 7xx series

[Bondi]

Didn't know there existed Zip drives for old Thinkpads that fit into the ultrabay. IBM never stops surprising.
Briefly mentioned at Thinkwiki https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/UltraBay ... _100_Drive
And what's even better is that someone sells them for cheap.
https://www.youxinkt.com/product/Vst-Zi ... 587cd.html
Unfortunately I'm not able to order from abroad now. So would be cool if someone took a chance and bought it and made a review.
PS I'm not familiar with this seller and not affiliated with it in any way, so buyers act at own risk.

[solidpro]

I've taken a punt and ordered 5. Website name looks well dodgy. If it didn't have a real USA address, I'd be even more suspicious.

We'll wait and see what happens. Do you know what thinkpad they're supposed to fit? Look likes maybe a 755-era machine?

[Enig]

Site looks sus but looking forward to hearing your experience with them.
I think you are both right that this is the Ultrabay Thick version (755/760/765)
.. from what I can glean.

UltraBay Thick: ZipIBM
UltraBay II : ZipIBM2
UltraslimBay : ZipIBM3

[Bondi]

I've taken a punt and ordered 5. Website name looks well dodgy. If it didn't have a real USA address, I'd be even more suspicious.

We'll wait and see what happens. Do you know what thinkpad they're supposed to fit? Look likes maybe a 755-era machine?

Cool! Really curious whether they will arrive eventually.
My understanding is that it fits all 7 series thinkpads that take CD-ROM drives. Like 755CD, CDV, 760LD, XD, etc.

Here is the list of all Ultrabay devices https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category ... ay_Devices
What also caught my eye was UltraBay HDD Adapter and UltraBay PCMCIA Cartridge. But I could find no traces of these, no pictures, nothing.

[solidpro]

Hmmm. OK so when I paid, I used a credit card (so I might have some protection) and it used Paypal to make the payment to:

You paid $65.95 USD to BRIAN CARN ENTERPRISES, LLC

I will send them an email to see if they make any noise. If anyone else is considering, I would hold off until I confirm if it's a black hole of a setup....

[solidpro]

Just to follow up, the contact email is dead (doesn't exist) and whilst they have a USA address, on the contact page is shows they're located in Pall Mall, central London (where the King lives).

Dodgy AF.

[RealBlackStuff]

When you see that word youxinkt, on first glance it reads like: you stink
That website is registered in China, through Alibaba: https://who.is/whois/youxinkt.com
Looks like it could be part of a whole series of youxi- websites.
No negatives about it (yet).
Wait and see...

[solidpro]

Kinda weird it's own by someone called Brian Carn in Jacksonville and you can street view the residential address but when you go to facebook there are about 20-30 duplicate Brian Carn accounts, all in Jacksonville and all seem to be the same person. The whole thing stinks.

[Edward Mendelson]

Kinda weird it's own by someone called Brian Carn in Jacksonville and you can street view the residential address but when you go to facebook there are about 20-30 duplicate Brian Carn accounts, all in Jacksonville and all seem to be the same person. The whole thing stinks.

Do you mean this Brian Carn in Jacksonville, Florida?

https://www.churchdirectory.tv/mcms/kcc ... 2/carn.cfm

Not the most likely seller of ThinkPad ZIP drives, perhaps.

[solidpro]

I don't know if it's the same person. Just weird that one of one or many Brian Carns in Jacksonville has dozens of replica facebook accounts.

[solidpro]

Althought I paid using a credit card, the transaction was actually undertaken by Paypal and whilst it wasn't actually attached in any way to my own personal Paypal account, I sent Paypal an online chat message with the transaction ID and they refunded me the whole amount.

So yes, the whole thing is a scam, probably to either get enough sales that don't get reversed because people forget or to harvest people's private information for future selling or scamming.

Avoid.

[Bondi]

Ah, sorry to hear that. Still good that you got a refund.
The only quiestion is that where did they get the pictures of that drives. Not the most common and thing (and not a bestseller either). Actually these are the only pictures of that IBMZIP. I'd rather think it's an abandoned store.

[solidpro]

Being abandoned doesn't seem to explain why it's a relatively new domain name, the owner has dozens of facebook profiles and their offices are at Buckingham Palace.

I think it's a scrape. They've picked weird geeky stuff at low prices because 'thats exactly what we wouldn't expect them to sell' if it was a scam...

[Saucey]

I have a feeling that most of these sites are just drop shippers, and then probably find out their source for supplies is also a drop shipper and their source is gone.

I forgot what old ThinkPad I was looking for, but I stumbled upon a site that was selling machines for reasonable prices. But it didn't really have much to say about the laptops. On their other products they were selling, it had a photo taken from a youtube thumbnail and I figured the site is just a scam or maybe selling prints of the pictures? I have no idea.

[solidpro]

Yeah, it's all a minefields. I sometimes need a really obsure 1991 ancient LCD screen for an old machine and low-and-behold, on Ali Express someone has 83 of them. And due to either the language barrier of this 'link in a long chain' situation, you never really know if it exists or what you'll get until you order it and it arrives. Mostly I've been pleasantly surprised - only one person in the last year was selling something completely duff and they made me return it to a non-existent address in china at my own cost and I had to fight for about 2 months with the non-existent support in Ali Express when I eventually got a refund.

I figure the rest of them have ended up back in China due to some sort of WEEE recycling scheme and they're doing the right thing in breaking them back down into spares for suckers like me to buy back for a second time.

[nfraser01]

Althought I paid using a credit card, the transaction was actually undertaken by Paypal and whilst it wasn't actually attached in any way to my own personal Paypal account, I sent Paypal an online chat message with the transaction ID and they refunded me the whole amount.

So yes, the whole thing is a scam, probably to either get enough sales that don't get reversed because people forget or to harvest people's private information for future selling or scamming.

Avoid.

Shame...