Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, da na said:

Asking for a friend... is it worth buying an IBM ThinkPad Transnote?

I don't know, but I want it

 

[da na]

9 hours ago, Schnoz said:

 

 

Edit: Guess who just accidentally killed the ATA IV when she tried inserting a Molex connector backwards. Whoops.

Also, I might have accidentally done the same thing to the Micropolis 5.25" drive. It still spins up, but I don't hear any head movement. Crap.

 

_{why am I dumb}

Hun... how tf do you put a molex connector in backwards? ...they've always been keyed, right? Some older IDE connectors aren't keyed but... 

[da na]

10 hours ago, Schnoz said:

 

 

 

I sense more to this story lol.

(Jokes aside, I fully support you, and I'm sure many others can say the same!)

............and perhaps I like the name a little too...

[Kilrah]

6 hours ago, da na said:

Hun... how tf do you put a molex connector in backwards? ...they've always been keyed, right?

Keying on "the molex used for PC power" is notoriously poor. A bit of a loose tolerance on both ends and a little too much force applied in a cramped space where you don't really see what you're doing and you've got it in backwards.

[flibberdipper]

16 hours ago, Schnoz said:

Wait, I actually have all three of those drives! I can send you one of the many Fireballs and a 40GB ATA IV (missing its rear sticker but still has the Seashield though) if you cover the cost of shipping (and given that I actually put together an IDE system to securely erase them lol). As for the Bigfoot, I need to dig it up, but it's a 4.3GB Bigfoot CY that I put heatsinks on to cool the controller and motor IC.

 

My favorite modern drives are def. my dual 10TB HGST He10s. They actually aren't the biggest or heaviest drives of that form factor that I have (that honor would probs go to the WD Se), but they're very loud for a modern drive. Being datacenter-focused drives, they are not ashamed of sounding like actual motorcycles during random seeks lol. I might save up for a dual-actuator HS760, since I got my hands on a SAS card. I want those loud drives, dammit.

Honestly if it's one of the Fireball EX, CR, or CX's I'll probably take you up on one of those and the Bigfoot when my next paycheck drops in, just fire me a DM when you figure it out. Assuming shipping isn't too bad and we don't have to risk shipping them across the country and killing them, it's likely I'll cave in. I absolutely don't need them however I am not the smartest man.

 

Also yeah, loud HDDs are a dirty pleasure of mine. Between my 8TB whitelabel Reds (again, specifically my 5640's and not the annoying wooshyboi 7200) and the 1TB HGST that came out of my Mac Mini, they make all the fun clunky tick sounds.

[da na]

1 minute ago, flibberdipper said:

Honestly if it's one of the Fireball EX, CR, or CX's I'll probably take you up on one of those and the Bigfoot when my next paycheck drops in, just fire me a DM when you figure it out. Assuming shipping isn't too bad and we don't have to risk shipping them across the country and killing them, it's likely I'll cave in. I absolutely don't need them however I am not the smartest man.

 

Also yeah, loud HDDs are a dirty pleasure of mine. Between my 8TB whitelabel Reds (again, specifically my 5640's and not the annoying wooshyboi 7200) and the 1TB HGST that came out of my Mac Mini, they make all the fun clunky tick sounds.

I had all of those drives at one time, never worked though. Some idiot shipped them from California in a padded envelope... (a Seagate, a Bigfoot and a Fireball.)

[da na]

Dad just sent me this. Copying a copy protected game, bit by bit, on an Apple II. Shows the drives around 0:22. 

Edit: This is in his office at work, too. There he also has a ton of analog synth hardware, as well as other early home computers (I believe two Commodore 64s, a C128, and... something else. Forgot.)

[8tg]

this brings me joy

posted from pic attached

[flibberdipper]

7 hours ago, Schnoz said:

Also, sorry for the accidental death of the Barracuda ATA IV. If/when I find another one in my uni's e-waste bin, I'll let you know!

Eh no biggie, thankfully they're still reasonably plentiful on eBay and not idiotic prices like every mf Bigfoot that I want.

[da na]

8 minutes ago, flibberdipper said:

Eh no biggie, thankfully they're still reasonably plentiful on eBay and not idiotic prices like every mf Bigfoot that I want.

If you need an ATA IV I've got a great condition 40GB one. I think it only has around 1000 hours on it but I'll have to check. Also have a Samsung and WD 40GB, and a 300GB IDE 7200.9.

[Bitter]

I've got a janky Excelstor Jupiter drive if anyone wants it.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I've got a janky Excelstor Jupiter drive if anyone wants it.

Aren't those the rebranded HGST Deskstar drives? ...because if so, I'm quite the HGST enthusiast (I've already taken it upon myself to collect one drive in every 3.5" chassis they ever made. There's 10 of them. Debatably 11.) 

[Bitter]

3 hours ago, da na said:

Aren't those the rebranded HGST Deskstar drives? ...because if so, I'm quite the HGST enthusiast (I've already taken it upon myself to collect one drive in every 3.5" chassis they ever made. There's 10 of them. Debatably 11.) 

I have no idea actually.

[ApolloX75]

On 3/30/2023 at 4:50 PM, flibberdipper said:

I absolutely don't need them however I am not the smartest man.

I identify with that statement.

 

Well said.

[Skip]

I found a bunch of old Apple floppy disks recently. I still have the machine that can read them at my mother’s home. I have no desire to do so, but they feel so good. Someone mentioned 10k Cheetah drives. Those old SCSI drives felt so substantial. Old retail gear was good (at least Apple), but old enterprise gear is almost luxurious. I am surprised no one thermally-blued hard drive cages, or Beveled and polished them like a luxury watch.

[BondiBlue]

On 3/29/2023 at 12:09 AM, Schnoz said:

Found a crapton of old hard drives in my university's e-waste! They're a motley crew of IDE, 68-pin SCSI, and SCA-equipped drives, all the way from full-height 5.25" drives to today's standard 1/3-height 3.5" drives. A few notable drives I'd like to point out:

Holy crap! Old hard drives are one of the main things I'm interested in when it comes to older computers, and some of those are very interesting drives! I occasionally buy some old drives from eBay, but I've never been lucky enough to find such an awesome lot like that. You're very lucky!

[da na]

49 minutes ago, Skip said:

I found a bunch of old Apple floppy disks recently. I still have the machine that can read them at my mother’s home. I have no desire to do so, but they feel so good. Someone mentioned 10k Cheetah drives. Those old SCSI drives felt so substantial. Old retail gear was good (at least Apple), but old enterprise gear is almost luxurious. I am surprised no one thermally-blued hard drive cages, or Beveled and polished them like a luxury watch.

I'm your gal when it comes to servers.

Oldest 10K I have is an IBM Ultrastar (before HGST bought the brand) from '97. That drive makes such an unholy racket, it's truly lovely. 

I also have some of the first Barracuda drives, back when Barracuda was the high end server brand of SCSI drives and 7,200 RPM was the big new thing. They're full height 3.5 (so as tall as a CD drive) and have 10 platters. 80 pin SCSI, 9.1GB. 

I run rather modern Cheetah SAS drives in my servers since I find them to be quite fast and reliable. 10k or 15k depending on application, and they hold up quite well. Only ever had one fail, and it was from like 2008 and had been run nearly 24/7 for 15 years so I think I can forgive its death. It did, though, give me an opportunity to look inside a Cheetah drive, only reaffirming my idea of how well built they are.

[Dabombinable]

Board 1 ressurected (maybe the PIII 650 won't interfere with the new caps):

[Dabombinable]

2 for 2. I can now restore the PC it came from back to original. Just not with the PII 233 until I get the fan working.

[Dabombinable]

And now I have a board for my mum's PC that works with the Sempron 2800+:

Watching Necroware has given me a few tips that made it far easier for me to desolder the caps cleanly.

[flibberdipper]

On 3/31/2023 at 11:17 AM, da na said:

If you need an ATA IV I've got a great condition 40GB one. I think it only has around 1000 hours on it but I'll have to check. Also have a Samsung and WD 40GB, and a 300GB IDE 7200.9.

ohgodohfuck a 40GB ATA IV AND a large IDE drive

 

pls stop making me want to spend money

[da na]

39 minutes ago, flibberdipper said:

ohgodohfuck a 40GB ATA IV AND a large IDE drive

 

pls stop making me want to spend money

And I also have a 500GB HGST Deskstar IDE from an Apple Xserve. 

 

...but if anyone wants it I'll have to charge a little extra, since I actually have that 18-year-old IDE drive deployed in one of my main servers. It runs 24/7 as an archival backup drive in my dual Socket 771 PowerEdge. Basically, "if I don't need this file but would feel bad deleting it it goes on this drive." No complaints, it holds up astonishingly well and is quite fast for an 18 year old drive, nonetheless an ATA one. One of my other servers has a 1TB SATA HGST Ultrastar from 2007, whenever I get a reliable drive that develops some bad sectors I relegate it to backup. This Ultrastar has maybe 100 or so bad sectors so I wouldn't trust it with anything too important, but with over 12 years of flying hours and counting it's doing great.

[8tg]

i hate this thinkpad so much for everything it is

 

This is a near max spec T43p, this is mid XP era holy grail material. This machine is the worst thing to operate, it took me like 4 hours to get Ethernet drivers working on this thing and wifi still doesnt work at all despite it clearly seeing all the networks.

Its hot and loud, because its a T42/3 chassis and minor heatsink changes handling the GPU and CPU, except the other gpu options for this chassis are things like passively cooled ATI mobility chips from the era.

This is a beautiful design of Motherboard Sata to IDE to IDE to Sata to Msata as a drive setup. Because this machine was made when mobile Sata drives were just becoming a thing, except they were stupidly expensive, so IBM decided it would be a good idea to make the Sata equipped board take IDE/PATA hard drives with an adapter chip. So to do the Msata SSD in here its going back and forth with this stupid disambiguation into IDE.

 

Its also like a 300-500$ thinkpad these days depending on condition and theyre leaving the realm of "i want a cool old thinkpad" and moreso entering the realm of meme material for being expensive and hard to maintain bricks.

 

[da na]

Today felt like an Office 97 day

[Dabombinable]

5 hours ago, da na said:

Today felt like an Office 97 day

Still does everything that is needed - I install it on my 98SE machines (though occasionally I use my boxed 2000 Pro upgrade) to make it easier to collate benchmark data. Plus, it is funny having computers from the turn of the millennium (or before it) in a daily driveable state.