Reviewing two products for data transfer of IDE hard drives to USB 3.0.

There are a lot of USB 2.0 devices out there, but not USB 3.0 it seems. There are the "loose" adapters, they are more flexible as you can also use optical drives, and there are the docking types which are a bit nicer to use in a permanent setup.

Still doing some tests, but a bit surprised at the transfer rates of older IDE drives. I expected them to be faster, they do around 40 MB per second for a 80 GB model. Both take 2.5" as well as 3.5" drives and will come in handy as I had no such solution yet.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Reviewing two products for data transfer of IDE hard drives to USB 3.0.

There are a lot of USB 2.0 devices out there, but not USB 3.0 it seems. There are the "loose" adapters, they are more flexible as you can also use optical drives, and there are the docking types which are a bit nicer to use in a permanent setup.

Still doing some tests, but a bit surprised at the transfer rates of older IDE drives. I expected them to be faster, they do around 40 MB per second for a 80 GB model. Both take 2.5" as well as 3.5" drives and will come in handy as I had no such solution yet.

Wow. I wonder how much those things cost? It'll be nice to hook up an IDE HDD to my computer without dismantling said system, hooking up said HDD to the motherboard, re-enabling the IDE HDD controller, and booting to the main SSD that has Windows installed just to copy files onto the other drive (games, drivers, backups, etc.).

PATA or SATA to USB adapters usually range for about $30-40 plus tax and shipping. I've purchased three SATA to USB 3.0 adapters within the past year for my SO, and the shipping and duties were quite reasonable from Amazon. They even gave me a refund for the generously overcharged duty deposits on various shipments.

As far as retro activities go, the only thing I've been doing lately is listening to retro MIDI files with the Roland Sound Canvas VA module, which I cannot afford to buy at the price that Roland is asking for it. Maybe I could have last year, but not this year.

I've also adapted the core module of that sound plugin into several player utilities. The latest is a Secret Sauce Windows MIDI port driver, which ends up loading the Sound Canvas core into whichever app you use the MIDI driver from, and supports two registry values for semi-on-the-fly reconfiguration of running instances.

Other software to support Sound Canvas VA includes foobar2000's foo_midi, and Cog for macOS.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Wow. I wonder how much those things cost? It'll be nice to hook up an IDE HDD to my computer without dismantling said system, hooking up said HDD to the motherboard, re-enabling the IDE HDD controller, and booting to the main SSD that has Windows installed just to copy files onto the other drive (games, drivers, backups, etc.).

Around $25 to $30 is the going rate I would say.

$15.59 shipped to the USA. And shipping should be quick as the seller is also in the USA.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-to-IDE-SATA-C … d-/391404061269

If you only need/want USB 2.0, they can be had for under $10.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Reviewing two products for data transfer of IDE hard drives to USB 3.0.

There are a lot of USB 2.0 devices out there, but not USB 3.0 it seems. There are the "loose" adapters, they are more flexible as you can also use optical drives, and there are the docking types which are a bit nicer to use in a permanent setup.

Still doing some tests, but a bit surprised at the transfer rates of older IDE drives. I expected them to be faster, they do around 40 MB per second for a 80 GB model. Both take 2.5" as well as 3.5" drives and will come in handy as I had no such solution yet.

I have that exact red one! Mine has the upright supports though. Awesome docking station! Think I have it 7 years now.

brostenen wrote:

Well.... I oficially killed my Unisys 486 today. It was in need of a new dallas battery, and after replacing the battery it is dead as a cold fish. Going to salvage cache memmory and other parts.

I always shed a tear at the passing of a 486 🙁

messing with a thinclient, i discovered that it mounts usb drives in dos as a harddisk, useful!

kiwa wrote:

messing with a thinclient, i discovered that it mounts usb drives in dos as a harddisk, useful!

IMG_20170516_215743.jpg

Woah! Never heard of that before. It must be some sort of translation in the bios. What brand and model?

brassicGamer wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Well.... I oficially killed my Unisys 486 today. It was in need of a new dallas battery, and after replacing the battery it is dead as a cold fish. Going to salvage cache memmory and other parts.

I always shed a tear at the passing of a 486 🙁

Press F to pay respects..

xplus93 wrote:

kiwa wrote:

messing with a thinclient, i discovered that it mounts usb drives in dos as a harddisk, useful!

IMG_20170516_215743.jpg

Woah! Never heard of that before. It must be some sort of translation in the bios. What brand and model?

It's a Wyse VX0 V90L, no way to get sound working on DOS, but yeah, at least 98 works fine with all drivers.

I'm messing with the dysfunctional Asus PC-DL motherboard I bought.

I needed an optical drive and the one I happend to grab was a broken Plextor DVD-R drive. I needed a break from the irritating Asus PC-DL so I decided to fix the Plextor drive.

To be able to see why the drive wouldn't reed discs I had to insert a disc with the Plextors cover removed, that was fun but perhaps not for the disc! I managed to fix the unit, an optical drive worth 1-2 euro saved! 😀

My "new" Dallas RTC chip finally arrived from China, so I was able to get my old Digital Venturis 575 PC up and running. It previously wouldn't boot with a flat battery, would never remember it's temporary BIOS settings.

Socket 5 motherboard (don't know manufacturer), SIS 85C501/02 Chipset
IDT Winchip C6 200MHz CPU
72MB RAM (2x 32MB EDO, 8MB Onboard)
S3 Trio 32/64 1MB Onboard Graphics
Aureal Vortex 2 AU8830 PCI Sound Card
RealTek RTL8131 10/100Mbps PCI Ethernet Card
640MB IDE HDD
OS: Windows 95 C

The IDT Winchip C6 is about the fastest CPU I have that will run in a Socket 5 motherboard, originally this PC had a Pentium 75MHz. Not a great CPU, but it was the very first CPU I ever bought to upgrade a Socket 7 PC, back in the day.

Could only find a spare 640MB HDD, so chose to go with Windows 95 C to save on some HDD space vs. 98.

Not sure I'll be keeping the Vortex 2 card in this PC, the PC is a bit too slow to be dealing with classic Win 9x gaming so that leaves DOS where the Vortex card is seriously lacking in compatibility (various glitches and sounds not playing as they should). Will probably stick in an ESS 1868 ISA card instead.

Finally managed to pick up my IBM ps/1 at my parents place. The system still booted although the image on the screen was a bit unsharp.
HDD didn't run anymore, dallas rtc is empty and the floppy drive has no sign of life.... 😒
Will take some time to see if I can get it running in a good shape again, and going to open and clean the monitor to see if I can fix the image. Also a good moment to check the psu since it is build into the monitor..

I will make a topic about this wonderfull machine as soon as I get a bit further. 😀

Bought an X-Fi XtremeMusic for $15. Still not sure if I got a great deal for something that may go into a build some day or overpaid for some junk I'll never use.

xplus93 wrote:

kiwa wrote:

messing with a thinclient, i discovered that it mounts usb drives in dos as a harddisk, useful!

IMG_20170516_215743.jpg

Woah! Never heard of that before. It must be some sort of translation in the bios. What brand and model?

Just so you both know this is not "news". my GA-P45-UD3P LGA-775 motherboard does this. My x58 motherboard did this, and my modern P67 Sabertooth does this also. Most PC motherboards have an option in the bios to change the translation for usb in bios and have a "hard disk" option. Even my older nForce4 motherboards have this option. You just have to look for it.

appiah4 wrote:

Bought an X-Fi XtremeMusic for $15. Still not sure if I got a great deal for something that may go into a build some day or overpaid for some junk I'll never use.

I'd say you did well there. I've always been a fan of the X-Fi, especially for XP gaming. Great performance and analog audio quality.
I have three X-Fi based cards myself. 😊

kithylin wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

kiwa wrote:

messing with a thinclient, i discovered that it mounts usb drives in dos as a harddisk, useful!

IMG_20170516_215743.jpg

Woah! Never heard of that before. It must be some sort of translation in the bios. What brand and model?

Just so you both know this is not "news". my GA-P45-UD3P LGA-775 motherboard does this. My x58 motherboard did this, and my modern P67 Sabertooth does this also. Most PC motherboards have an option in the bios to change the translation for usb in bios and have a "hard disk" option. Even my older nForce4 motherboards have this option. You just have to look for it.

Well, the newest desktop machines i've worked with on a serious level are P4 systems. Anything else has been troubleshooting customer PCs or cleaning cigarette gunk out of them. One of these days i'll stop buying retro stuff and buy a CPU and power supply for my H87 board.

Not retro, but just install some teeny tiny ram into my new 1366 system.

xplus93 wrote:

kithylin wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

Woah! Never heard of that before. It must be some sort of translation in the bios. What brand and model?

Just so you both know this is not "news". my GA-P45-UD3P LGA-775 motherboard does this. My x58 motherboard did this, and my modern P67 Sabertooth does this also. Most PC motherboards have an option in the bios to change the translation for usb in bios and have a "hard disk" option. Even my older nForce4 motherboards have this option. You just have to look for it.

Well, the newest desktop machines i've worked with on a serious level are P4 systems. Anything else has been troubleshooting customer PCs or cleaning cigarette gunk out of them. One of these days i'll stop buying retro stuff and buy a CPU and power supply for my H87 board.

x2, i stopped working in support a while ago and i don't care about modern desktops computers so whatever. it's cool to see that function, nobody says it was "news".