clueless1 wrote:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

This is from 2014. It should be noted that Backblaze's 2016 tests show vast improvements in Seagate's failure rates, so Seagate seems to be responding to the pressure.

Yep.. Segates are Shite. Finally got em hooked up, two of the 3 show bad sectors right off the bat from the start of the scan. 3rd one's doing better though... good thing these were free.

I know a person that works for century link. So one day I "overheard" they were going to throw away a lot of old dvr boxes. I ended up getting about 20. Each one had a 320gb sata drive, sata/ide convertor and an assortment of screws. but it gets better! Every box they deem "bad" they pile in a bin and toss them. the 2nd gen boxes don't have all the metal parts, heatsinks, etc. but they do have 500gb 2.5" sata drives. I ended up with about 30 of those so far. Recently they switched to 1tb 2.5" drives. I've only gotten 16 of those before my source dried up. But they run real nice as my home file server in a raid-6 array. I sold off most of the 500gb drives and 320s. kept enough so i would have spares forever. ^.^

clueless1 wrote:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

This is from 2014. It should be noted that Backblaze's 2016 tests show vast improvements in Seagate's failure rates, so Seagate seems to be responding to the pressure.

This Backblaze article tends to get circulated pretty heavily when it comes to hard drive failure rates. I'm a WD customer and you can pry my Reds from my cold dead hands... but it's a bit disingenuous though since Backblaze have vastly different usage scenarios than regular people, even different to normal datacentres. Back in 2014 they were running their pods with virtually no vibration isolation or anything like that, and that most of their drives were shucked from consumer external USB drives during the Thailand floods - the drives were being used way outside their intended purpose.

That said, yeah those Seagate 1.5TB and 3TB drives are pretty terrible. But it appears as though it was just a one-off with that particular design and they've bounced back. Still, the bad press they copped from that Backblaze article being blogspammed and taken out of context is not easy to recover from.

dexter311 wrote:

That said, yeah those Seagate 1.5TB and 3TB drives are pretty terrible. But it appears as though it was just a one-off with that particular design and they've bounced back. Still, the bad press they copped from that Backblaze article being blogspammed and taken out of context is not easy to recover from.

Back in 2006 i dealt with a spate of Seagate-equipped Macbooks where the heads fell off their armature. Most people didn't fork out to get their data recovered and, even if they did, good luck getting anything off those platters!

Tried to connect a SCSI CD-Burner to a sound card, it produced some horrible noises and freezes at boot so I guess either the drive is dead or the card's interface doesn't work. Everything goes back to normal when it isn't connected and I'm happy with the IDE reader on the system anyway, it was just an experiment so no real loss.

Now I'm going to try installing my Scenic/MX2 in my Pentium 60.

Woo!

This does, however, require that I disable the network and switch to 640x480 (If I want high color) or else the system complains and will not play video. This is noted in Diamond's Readme. Only real problem I have is that there is no left channel audio, but I suspect this to be the cable I used, the card may not use a normal pinout and this should be easy to fix with a multimeter to bell out the ground pins and a pin to move the crimped connectors in the plastic housing at the end of my cable.

Now, give me access to Vogonsdrivers and I shall upload the working drivers for those that need them in the future.

Edit: The audio bug, seems to be software as the CD passthru works fine and as such, I can be 100% that the pinout is correct. It might just be the way the file I tested with was encoded, the computer did complain about it a lot when it was encoding and VLC doesn't like it, plus I think I may have used non-standard parameters, so it is only fair to say the Scenic probably has no idea what I'm asking it to do. I have some old VCDs somewhere so perhaps I'll try those as I know they work, plus a lot of my old stuff used VCD encoding so I can try that too.

Edit 2: Seems the MPEG card didn't like having the CD-ROM plugged into it, despite the sockets being marked for this purpose. I have connected my CD-ROM drive back to the sound card and have connected the MPEG card to the AUX-IN that I wasn't using anyway, I prefer it this way regardless of how well it works - and it does work, so that's a bonus. Sound quality is actually pretty good, video is smooth, this was a good investment. Still haven't tried playing a real VCD from a disc yet, I shall do it tomorrow as I have to go to sleep soon and can't remember where my VCD authoring software is, nor can I be bothered to dig out any of those old VCDs I have as I seem to think they are stored in the bottom of a box at the bottom of a stack of boxes that are behind other stacks of boxes.

Been going through some old boxed games and through my cache of spare case fans, which seems to be kinda completely depleted by now (needed a 12cm fan to replace a dying one the other day), nothing much really.

luckybob wrote:

I know a person that works for century link. So one day I "overheard" they were going to throw away a lot of old dvr boxes. I ended up getting about 20. Each one had a 320gb sata drive, sata/ide convertor and an assortment of screws. but it gets better! Every box they deem "bad" they pile in a bin and toss them. the 2nd gen boxes don't have all the metal parts, heatsinks, etc. but they do have 500gb 2.5" sata drives. I ended up with about 30 of those so far. Recently they switched to 1tb 2.5" drives. I've only gotten 16 of those before my source dried up. But they run real nice as my home file server in a raid-6 array. I sold off most of the 500gb drives and 320s. kept enough so i would have spares forever. ^.^

Dude, nicely done! Lifelong supply ftw! 😁

Downgraded my Celeron "mendocino" 466MHz system to a Cyrix/VIA 600 MHz. 🤣

dexter311 wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

This is from 2014. It should be noted that Backblaze's 2016 tests show vast improvements in Seagate's failure rates, so Seagate seems to be responding to the pressure.

This Backblaze article tends to get circulated pretty heavily when it comes to hard drive failure rates. I'm a WD customer and you can pry my Reds from my cold dead hands... but it's a bit disingenuous though since Backblaze have vastly different usage scenarios than regular people, even different to normal datacentres. Back in 2014 they were running their pods with virtually no vibration isolation or anything like that, and that most of their drives were shucked from consumer external USB drives during the Thailand floods - the drives were being used way outside their intended purpose.

That said, yeah those Seagate 1.5TB and 3TB drives are pretty terrible. But it appears as though it was just a one-off with that particular design and they've bounced back. Still, the bad press they copped from that Backblaze article being blogspammed and taken out of context is not easy to recover from.

All I can say is that my experience in the field with desktops, laptops and DVRs indicates vastly more Seagate failures than any other brand. I know even my sample size of hundreds is not that big, and Seagates tend to be used more than other brands, but it still leaves a bad enough taste that I usually steer clear of them. If I do buy one, it will be a model that Backblaze has a low failure rate on.

Interestingly, I don't see nearly as many issues with old Seagates in the 1GB-80GB range, and they've been in use a lot longer. That tells me their quality took a nosedive at some point between 160GB and 2TB model years.

luckybob wrote:

I know a person that works for century link. So one day I "overheard" they were going to throw away a lot of old dvr boxes. I ended up getting about 20. Each one had a 320gb sata drive, sata/ide convertor and an assortment of screws. but it gets better! Every box they deem "bad" they pile in a bin and toss them. the 2nd gen boxes don't have all the metal parts, heatsinks, etc. but they do have 500gb 2.5" sata drives. I ended up with about 30 of those so far. Recently they switched to 1tb 2.5" drives. I've only gotten 16 of those before my source dried up. But they run real nice as my home file server in a raid-6 array. I sold off most of the 500gb drives and 320s. kept enough so i would have spares forever. ^.^

I work for Centurylink actually, but I don't work with their consumer products. I work with our big financial customers and design Cloud and Managed Hosting environments as well as corporate networks.

HighTreason wrote:

Now, give me access to Vogonsdrivers and I shall upload the working drivers for those that need them in the future.

Simple: private-message SquallStrive to get access.

Worst-case scenario, upload them elsewhere and drop the link in here with an explanation, and someone else will do it on your behalf: VOGONS Driver Library
(not a great long-term solution)

BSA Starfire wrote:

Downgraded my Celeron "mendocino" 466MHz system to a Cyrix/VIA 600 MHz. 🤣

Lmfao!

Had a visit here and showed off with my Slot 1 RDRAM build. She told me about her crappy laptop with 1GB memory and how awefully slow it was, so I told her I was gonna show her a Pentium 3 that's maybe 5 years older and running on a 20GB HDD. She laughed when I told her it was a machine with just 256 meg RAM and a 16 meg graphics card, along with a 933MHz P3. It actually had some weird issue booting and the DVD drive kept closing and opening all the time, but a simple reboot and setting the 1st boot device to HDD fixed this. I'll go replace the ODD later as I have plenty spares anyway (will label the drive because chances are good it's something minor).

But once I got past the blinking cursor, it was on the desktop in 5 seconds or so and after having run 3DMark2001 I asked her to keep watching as I shut the rig down, which was done within 3 seconds. She was amazed I can tell ya 😁

I had also asked how loud she found it and she told me she couldn't even hear it, though she could see the fans running (I had the side panel removed as I always do with rigs I haven't powered on for a long time). Her hearing isn't too great though, but if it were loud, she would've noticed this anyway, especially with a rig of about 2000-vintage.

I can't believe it.. I'm still kicking myself even a week after the fact...

I totally fried the hard drive on my Dell Dimension 4100 by.. plugging the Molex power connector upside down... 5V into the 12V power rail and vice versa. Once I turned it on and noticed the PCB of the drive getting EXTREMELY hot, I realized what I had done. 😵 There goes probably a dozen or two hours installing programs and drivers and setting everything up just right.

To my credit though, part of the hard drive's plastic casing was cracked at the corner where the Molex was, which made it much easier to plug it in the wrong way. And it was dark. But I still hate myself.

My plan was to buy a new hard drive of the exact same model, (Western Digital WD800BB,) and switch out the PCB boards between them. But that didn't work, the drive just makes clicking noises with the new board in... Damn. Not sure if the head and platter were also fried or what.

This is the second time a hard drive has died in this machine. First time was a mechanical failure, the Maxtor drive made a horrid noise on bootup after I switched some RAM sticks. I believe this machine is cursed... 😢

Haha, I did exactly the same thing a while ago, but trying to connect a new 2 GB drive to an eSATA connector. I also bought an identical drive and switched the PCBs, again with no luck. I got rid of the eSATA panel. The thing is just too dangerous. Removable drive trays FTW.

Well...I suppose this can be retro activity. Ordered a replacement battery for a UPS I had collecting dust in the basement, for the purpose of protecting my retro PCs. Battery arrived today, so now I can feel a little more confident gaming during thunderstorms.

Today I was on a boring conference call while working from home and I took the time to straighten the pins on a 486dx2 and a AM486DX4 that had gotten smashed when they were shipped to me.

Started a new project to do with a 486DX 33 MHz 😀

These "lower" 486 setups don't seem to get mentioned / used much but I find them very useful.

Yes.
They can sometimes be looked at, as a kind of 386dx40, just with a little more power.
People tend to go for Cyrix SLC/DLC instead of an Intel 486dx33, yet they tend to be
within the same league. Looking at the lower DLC's. I don't know...

For me, the 486dx33 are more than well suited for 1990 to 1992 Dos games.
8mb of Ram and an ET4000 plus an SB16 are a good setup for those three years.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Started a new project to do with a 486DX 33 MHz 😀

These "lower" 486 setups don't seem to get mentioned / used much but I find them very useful.

I loves my 486 SX33 and use it regularly. Depending on the method the motherboard employs for de-turbing, a 33MHz 486 does 386 specific games like Wing Commander nicely too. I use an OPTi 495SLC board which actually under-clocks the CPU, so it works really well.

@brostenen - I'd argue that they have more than just a little more power than a 386DX 40 because everything else about the system is that much faster too, particularly if we're talking about a VLB based 486 (i.e. a real 486 😈 ).

badmojo wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Started a new project to do with a 486DX 33 MHz 😀

These "lower" 486 setups don't seem to get mentioned / used much but I find them very useful.

I loves my 486 SX33 and use it regularly. Depending on the method the motherboard employs for de-turbing, a 33MHz 486 does 386 specific games like Wing Commander nicely too. I use an OPTi 495SLC board which actually under-clocks the CPU, so it works really well.

@brostenen - I'd argue that they have more than just a little more power than a 386DX 40 because everything else about the system is that much faster too, particularly if we're talking about a VLB based 486 (i.e. a real 486 😈 ).

The computer my parents bought when I was in elementary schoo...EG our first computer was a 486SX33. The only bad thing about it was my parents couldn't afford a sound card at the time so it was all PC Speaker for until I sprang for one myself. I used that computer until I was old enough to make my own money and build my own.