The motherboard will properly identify the Zip drive as a removable drive without loading the drivers. DOS sees it as the B: drive, and you can access it just like a floppy. Windows identifies it as the B: drive if you don't load the drivers, and runs the drive in DOS Compatability Mode vice 32 bit mode. I don't know if you can assign the drive as the B: drive once the drivers are loaded, but I don't think so.