Seller sent a discount on a 500MB IDE Fujitsu hard drive. An true 3.5" HH. Not 1" high. Took it. Told seller to take extra care on packing.
Going into my 386 or 486 compaq.

Cheers,

Dang, you're gonna need earplugs, some tiedown bolts and ratchet straps to keep the system unit in the same room and a spare calendar to track the spinup time. 🤣 I hope it's a real slow 386 you're putting it in.

Low capacity hard drives are such a nightmare to find.

I have like maybe 3 working drives under 2GB, the absolute smallest of which is the 500MB drive in my 486.

I've noticed there are considerable jumps in reliability at the 2GB, 20GB and 80GB marks in terms of when that become the common hard drive size.

Asininity wrote on 2023-03-18, 22:04:

I'll admit it was the box art that drew me in. Now I just need to bring myself to actually use it. […]
Show full quote

I'll admit it was the box art that drew me in. Now I just need to bring myself to actually use it.

PXL_20230316_101944432.jpg
PXL_20230316_101819163.jpg

kixs wrote on 2023-03-18, 06:39:

Sounds fine by me 😉

Otherwise here is a small review:
http://www.amoretro.de/2014/07/terratec-waves … rboard-2mb.html

In the end, that's really all that matters. I saw the same, I wish there were more reviews on all of the various sound cards. I'd probably try my hand at it if I knew more about the subject.

I was never much into music... but I have grown a "small" collection of sound cards and add-ons over the years - I blame Vogons for it 🤣

I usually go here for the sound comparisons. Hearing music is enough for me 😉
https://www.wavetable.nl/

Asininity wrote on 2023-03-18, 22:04:

I'll admit it was the box art that drew me in. Now I just need to bring myself to actually use it. […]
Show full quote

I'll admit it was the box art that drew me in. Now I just need to bring myself to actually use it.

PXL_20230316_101944432.jpg
PXL_20230316_101819163.jpg

kixs wrote on 2023-03-18, 06:39:

Sounds fine by me 😉

Otherwise here is a small review:
http://www.amoretro.de/2014/07/terratec-waves … rboard-2mb.html

In the end, that's really all that matters. I saw the same, I wish there were more reviews on all of the various sound cards. I'd probably try my hand at it if I knew more about the subject.

🤣

Yeah, that box art is fantastic! It's like someone let a 10 year old play with some 3D software for a day and then used whatever they had made for box art. Seriously... why would anyone put something that looked like that on a retail product?

I was never really into box collecting, but after seeing some more recently I have really started to appreciate the absurd box art, terrible typos\bad grammar and the outrageous claims that were often completely lies. It seems like PC hardware in the 80s was "all business" and had a very formal and appealing look to it, then in the 90s when things became more consumer focused the boxes just got really really stupid as all these companies started having to advertise products that were so new that no one knew how to market them. It's no wonder that 3dfx took off the way they did between the hardware support and the ability to market a functional product in an appealing way.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-19, 09:00:

Seriously... why would anyone put something that looked like that on a retail product?

Because Trident?

Picked up this loot box for £20.

Had a chance to look through it now and test a few bits. There is a lot of waste and quite a few broken Nvidia M64s (what a shame..)
However there is 2x brand new logitech H111 which sell for more than the £20 I paid so this is basically a free lot. Also a nice microphone that is £95 on amazon!

..But to retro tech:

There are 4x FSP power supplies with 27a on the 5v rail so will be very useful if working but I have no tested yet..

What I have tested is these 3 GPUs and all are working fine.

STB Systems RIVA 128 4mb. AGP
Sapphire Radeon 7000 32mb PCI
Sapphire Radeon 9250 64mb PCI

Happy with that!

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-19, 05:11:

Low capacity hard drives are such a nightmare to find.

I have like maybe 3 working drives under 2GB, the absolute smallest of which is the 500MB drive in my 486.

I've noticed there are considerable jumps in reliability at the 2GB, 20GB and 80GB marks in terms of when that become the common hard drive size.

Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement did a teardown of a dead drive once and found that the arm that moves the heads had a bumper at the end where it parks that was made of rubber. The problem is that this is the same kind of rubber that turns to goo over time.

So now we know that there are vintage drives out there which contain ticking time bombs of little rubber bumpers. And there is no way to see if it exists without opening it up and destroying the drive.

That's real nice.

Honestly I'm just waiting for someone in China to spin up IDE to SD production at a big enough scale to bring the cost down (right now it's $20, it's a simple device that I'm sure could be brought down to $10 at scale) then I'm probably going to move away from using actual vintage hard drives. I already put little $9 120GB Chinesium SATA SSDs from eBay into any XP rig with SATA.

Its one of those concessions (in terms of historical accuracy) that seems more and more worth making.

Keep in mind that you may be limited to 128GB SSDs without patches.

Trying to figure out the cause of data corruption in Windows 9x

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-19, 03:59:

Dang, you're gonna need earplugs, some tiedown bolts and ratchet straps to keep the system unit in the same room and a spare calendar to track the spinup time. 🤣 I hope it's a real slow 386 you're putting it in.

I know. I had seen noisiest hard drives back in the day. There is few that one that shakes the world is linear actuation voice coil in size of 5.25" full height, if I use a checkit to test seeking there is one that makes full stroke and watch the tower PC wobble.

Another one you have not seen is WD 3.5" HH that shakes and noisy. Now rare to find any WD in HH.

What I don't like is maxtor 3.5" 1" is unique singing or chirp sound the instant the spindle starts to spin. Since this often make me think platters going bad by that chirping from heads rubbing on platters.

Cheers,

Got bequiet! pure rock 2 heatsink for the "retro" i7-4790k family computer to stop the oscillating sound of the intel 1 inch high fan.

I have one issue with it. Supplied rubber o rings are not proper way to isolate the standoffs and studs electrically from motherboard's as there are tracks running around the mounting holes. I fix this using plastic washers under the board's and made 4 insulating washers from stiff cardboard for the studs.

Other than that heatsink is nicely made per the german designed and I do like that back plate stacks on the backside of intel's back plate for best support instead of the motherboard's substrane.

Back together in it's place and mother is so happy about the audible level so quiet. Before that, she said could hear that thing with bedroom door shut and bed is down the hall, quite a distance.

Cheers,

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-19, 15:20:

That's real nice.

Honestly I'm just waiting for someone in China to spin up IDE to SD production at a big enough scale to bring the cost down (right now it's $20, it's a simple device that I'm sure could be brought down to $10 at scale) then I'm probably going to move away from using actual vintage hard drives. I already put little $9 120GB Chinesium SATA SSDs from eBay into any XP rig with SATA.

Its one of those concessions (in terms of historical accuracy) that seems more and more worth making.

eBay has the IDE to SD adapters for $10 and I am seeing the same ones on Alibaba for $5.

There are also IDE to CF adapters for cheap.

Then there are also IDE to SATA and IDE to m.2 SATA adapters.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-19, 15:09:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-19, 05:11:

Low capacity hard drives are such a nightmare to find.

I have like maybe 3 working drives under 2GB, the absolute smallest of which is the 500MB drive in my 486.

I've noticed there are considerable jumps in reliability at the 2GB, 20GB and 80GB marks in terms of when that become the common hard drive size.

Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement did a teardown of a dead drive once and found that the arm that moves the heads had a bumper at the end where it parks that was made of rubber. The problem is that this is the same kind of rubber that turns to goo over time.

So now we know that there are vintage drives out there which contain ticking time bombs of little rubber bumpers. And there is no way to see if it exists without opening it up and destroying the drive.

It's dead anyway, you can perform some necromancy in a clear plastic bag, big enough to get your arms in, and keep it "clean" enough for hours of retro use when you've reanimated it. Probably start to get into "only good for short run of data recovery" above 1GB a platter, to ~10GB a platter, and strict clean room only above that.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-19, 20:15:

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-19, 15:09:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-03-19, 05:11:

Low capacity hard drives are such a nightmare to find.

I have like maybe 3 working drives under 2GB, the absolute smallest of which is the 500MB drive in my 486.

I've noticed there are considerable jumps in reliability at the 2GB, 20GB and 80GB marks in terms of when that become the common hard drive size.

Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement did a teardown of a dead drive once and found that the arm that moves the heads had a bumper at the end where it parks that was made of rubber. The problem is that this is the same kind of rubber that turns to goo over time.

So now we know that there are vintage drives out there which contain ticking time bombs of little rubber bumpers. And there is no way to see if it exists without opening it up and destroying the drive.

It's dead anyway, you can perform some necromancy in a clear plastic bag, big enough to get your arms in, and keep it "clean" enough for hours of retro use when you've reanimated it. Probably start to get into "only good for short run of data recovery" above 1GB a platter, to ~10GB a platter, and strict clean room only above that.

At the other end of the spectrum: when dealing with a 20MB MFM drive, I was able to open it up to oil a gear that was getting stuck occasionally, and when a tiny smudge got on the platter I just buffed it out and started the thing back up. Everything worked fine but one game would no longer load (Alley Cat) so I opened the drive back up, buffed the spot to a perfect shine and then the game would load after that. With such low density on those old drives they are very forgiving.

These days a spot the size of pencil eraser could house a decade's worth of high resolution family photos that will never be seen again. 😵

It's incredible that you could buff the platter like that. I wonder if that was also what limited removable Bernoulli type platter density as well; fragility from surface debris.

I wish floptical media had been more of a thing. A 100MB size floppy would have been incredible. Instead, we had to wait years for USB drives to become economical. Although extremely reliable, they just don't have the same charm as the Sony micro diskette.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-19, 22:52:

It's incredible that you could buff the platter like that. I wonder if that was also what limited removable Bernoulli type platter density as well; fragility from surface debris.

I wish floptical media had been more of a thing. A 100mb size floppy would have been incredible. Instead, we had to wait years for USB drives to become economical. Although extremely reliable, they just don't have the same charm as the Sony micro diskette.

*Looks at LS-120 drives
*Pokes 100mb Zip Drive
*Cries in Mo Disk tears

Do we not exist to you ?

I mean that they didn't survive as a technology or increase on density much after their peak. I think Jaz drive were the highest density, although I admit that I haven't looked into it closely.

I used both Zip and Jaz drives in their day, so I am definitely familiar with them. Maybe it's just the drive failures and reliability that have left me bitter with Iomega. For example, I have had Jaz disks actually explode inside the drive, taking all of the data with them.

I don't consider Zip disks to be a contender for the Sony micro diskette format, but rather its own format. The magneto-optical drive, as seen in the NeXTcube, is the future I would have like to have seen. 230MB floptical? Yes, please!

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-20, 01:11:

I mean that they didn't survive as a technology or increase on density much after their peak. I think Jaz drive were the highest density, although I admit that I haven't looked into it closely.

I used both Zip and Jaz drives in their day, so I am definitely familiar with them. Maybe it's just the drive failures and reliability that have left me bitter with Iomega. For example, I have had Jaz disks actually explode inside the drive, taking all of the data with them.

I don't consider Zip disks to be a contender for the Sony micro diskette format, but rather its own format. The NeXTcube with its magneto-optical drive is the future I would have like to have seen.

I have a couple of MO Drives, I love them, a really nice bit of tech that IIRC managed to get to 9.1Gb with the 5.25 sized versions and 2.3Gb with the 3.5 version. Never seen a 5.25 MO drive but would for sure love to own one, its one tech that I wish they had kept developing.

Doing a bit of digging and MO is still in use today in Medical, Telecommunications and Aviation for storing critical data due to its reliability, so perhaps they are still developing it, would love to see a faster version of it.

That's pretty cool if it's still being developed, or at least maintained. Maybe once it gets obsoleted, we'll see some of the hardware trickle out into the used market.