Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:57:

The magnetic material is suspended in some kind of alien gelatin, afaik. And that is bound to deteriorate eventually.

Or maybe they ran out, after all they only recovered 7 from Roswell, 4 from somewhere else, doubt they had more than 29 sets of bones to boil down for it... must have thinned it out with plain old cowbone juice as the years went on.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:57:

Well, that's why it's called a race to the bottom. Someone in capitalism will always be even more depraved and void of a general sense of honor and decency if they can lower cost somehow. Then all others are forced to do the same, repeat. Also known as a prisoner's dilemma.

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:06:

Floppy disks / decline : some discussion on the topic here. Data density, hardware manufacturing, environmental factors, are among common reasons given.

Concepts like 'clip rate' are interesting. To quote an old mag advertisement 'Clip Rate is the amount of oxide coating that a disk can loose before it becomes unuseable. It is usually expressed as a percentage. Most high quality disks have a clip rate of 60% or higher'.

The fact such quantifiable factors exist, with variation between brands/etc, all but proves that There Are Ways To Do It Cheaper & Worse! Presumably, the decline of the market for floppy disks involved a gradual, general withdrawal of resources and attention on every level.

Yeah, if you can flip back the shutter and see a light bulb through it, it ain't got a lot of coating.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:39:

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the m […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:57:

Well, that's why it's called a race to the bottom. Someone in capitalism will always be even more depraved and void of a general sense of honor and decency if they can lower cost somehow. Then all others are forced to do the same, repeat. Also known as a prisoner's dilemma.

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

Sorry, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
If the customer buys a discount rabbit to stew that is actually a dead cat, someone must have already made the conscious decision to sell a dead cat as a rabbit. Ad if the label says 'rabbit' and rabbits used to be rabbits, as honest farmers sold them, but not dead cats they ran over while driving home drunk from the brothel, then the customer is not to be blamed for being cheated, simple as that.
While prices remain opaque to him and it's his natural impulse to chose lower ones, the customer is entitled to expect an average quality that the state of technology can provide and does not have to expect or check against arbitrary regressions from said quality.
"That's what the customer wants" is IMHO only a narrative put forth by corporate PR as a cop out to fend off any idea of corporate responsibility or good practice. Usually, these get eventually enforced by warranties and regulation, but the IT sector mainly fails to do so because of an excessive speed of development or deficient expertise of regulatory bodies.
See the old "if Microsoft was building cars" internet joke for illustration.

That anything is "business as usual" doesn't mean it's right.
The China boom was also about selling crap made by people who never will meet their customers on a party.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:40:

Yeah, if you can flip back the shutter and see a light bulb through it, it ain't got a lot of coating.

That's some good advice. I've not heard this one before.

It's regrettably that magneto optical disks didn't become a thing. As a technology, I think it was a terrific improvement on reliability and durability. I believe that one of the reasons that alternative technologies didn't succeed was due to the success of Zip disks, which, as they were sourced from a single supplier, never came down in price as a commodity like floppies eventually did.

This ended up being a mistake as Zip disks had reliability problems of their own. But by this point there were no reasonable competing technologies as an affordable price for megnetic media, once CD writers had started to mature. But again, this was another mistake for reliability, as the dyes and glues used in manufacturing these discs do not have a long shelf life.

One alternative that I can think of that persists is DVD-RAM. But it has been and will always be expensive and could never be a true successor to the floppy disk.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:39:

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the m […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:57:

Well, that's why it's called a race to the bottom. Someone in capitalism will always be even more depraved and void of a general sense of honor and decency if they can lower cost somehow. Then all others are forced to do the same, repeat. Also known as a prisoner's dilemma.

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

some of those people have a choice between cheap but available or not available at all

it's easier to hold onto high standards and deride 'capitalism' for diluting the quality of products when you can afford the better ones

Floppy discs, as an example, became cheaper mostly as a result of mass production lowering unit price rather than a loss of functionality. I.e. an earlier more expensive floppy disk stored x, a later cheaper floppy disk also stored x

whether they both still stored x 5 years after they were bought is another matter, most people neither expected nor cared about that in later mass production years

i don't like the lowering of quality either (in so far as this does actually happen alongside mass production), but i do accept that it makes a product available to more people who want to do something right there and then and for whom the cheap product works

When a cheap poor product fails after a short while the customer may not care, but its a pollution nightmare. Overall i would prefer quality and longevity, but I accept what that would mean in terms of limited affordability for lots of people

gerry wrote on 2022-04-14, 08:27:

some of those people have a choice between cheap but available or not available at all […]
Show full quote

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:39:

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the m […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:57:

Well, that's why it's called a race to the bottom. Someone in capitalism will always be even more depraved and void of a general sense of honor and decency if they can lower cost somehow. Then all others are forced to do the same, repeat. Also known as a prisoner's dilemma.

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

some of those people have a choice between cheap but available or not available at all

it's easier to hold onto high standards and deride 'capitalism' for diluting the quality of products when you can afford the better ones

Floppy discs, as an example, became cheaper mostly as a result of mass production lowering unit price rather than a loss of functionality. I.e. an earlier more expensive floppy disk stored x, a later cheaper floppy disk also stored x

whether they both still stored x 5 years after they were bought is another matter, most people neither expected nor cared about that in later mass production years

i don't like the lowering of quality either (in so far as this does actually happen alongside mass production), but i do accept that it makes a product available to more people who want to do something right there and then and for whom the cheap product works

When a cheap poor product fails after a short while the customer may not care, but its a pollution nightmare. Overall i would prefer quality and longevity, but I accept what that would mean in terms of limited affordability for lots of people

Personally I often find the cheaper items (and can be as broad as generic household utilities) available everywhere, with the more expensive items hard to actually know how good the quality really is.
Like a couple years ago I bought a measuring cup (just a simple transparant plastic one holding 1 liter) sold as "extra heavy duty" or something. Fast forward a year or so I was going to use it and washed it quick with clean water (just to get any settled dust out as I don't use it that often, just in case) and wanted to remove some of the excess water by
waving it (dunno how else to call it in english, I wanted to move it around to get rid of some of the water, but it didn't need to be completely dry) and this movement stress caused the handle to break -_-
Suuuure, extra heavy duty but breaking (quite literally even) with normal kitchen use, what a load of bs that was -_-

Same thing with stuff like shoes (if I buy a pair of shoes 3 times as cheap, they will last 3 times as short making it a useless effort spending 3 times as much time fitting them) or pans (always seem to break at around 2 years, even though the frying pans I did get were not exactly cheap either).

From hindsight it's often easier to learn what to avoid, but by that timethese items aren't available anymore anyway most of the time.

Some of these items are really good and they just keep on lasting. But many just aren't up to par even if they aren't the cheapest tier.

Tetrium wrote on 2022-04-14, 09:04:

Personally I often find the cheaper items (and can be as broad as generic household utilities) available everywhere, with the mo […]
Show full quote

gerry wrote on 2022-04-14, 08:27:

some of those people have a choice between cheap but available or not available at all […]
Show full quote

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:39:

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

some of those people have a choice between cheap but available or not available at all

it's easier to hold onto high standards and deride 'capitalism' for diluting the quality of products when you can afford the better ones

Floppy discs, as an example, became cheaper mostly as a result of mass production lowering unit price rather than a loss of functionality. I.e. an earlier more expensive floppy disk stored x, a later cheaper floppy disk also stored x

whether they both still stored x 5 years after they were bought is another matter, most people neither expected nor cared about that in later mass production years

i don't like the lowering of quality either (in so far as this does actually happen alongside mass production), but i do accept that it makes a product available to more people who want to do something right there and then and for whom the cheap product works

When a cheap poor product fails after a short while the customer may not care, but its a pollution nightmare. Overall i would prefer quality and longevity, but I accept what that would mean in terms of limited affordability for lots of people

Personally I often find the cheaper items (and can be as broad as generic household utilities) available everywhere, with the more expensive items hard to actually know how good the quality really is.
Like a couple years ago I bought a measuring cup (just a simple transparant plastic one holding 1 liter) sold as "extra heavy duty" or something. Fast forward a year or so I was going to use it and washed it quick with clean water (just to get any settled dust out as I don't use it that often, just in case) and wanted to remove some of the excess water by
waving it (dunno how else to call it in english,

Shaking

I wanted to move it around to get rid of some of the water, but it didn't need to be completely dry) and this movement stress ca […]
Show full quote

I wanted to move it around to get rid of some of the water, but it didn't need to be completely dry) and this movement stress caused the handle to break -_-
Suuuure, extra heavy duty but breaking (quite literally even) with normal kitchen use, what a load of bs that was -_-

Same thing with stuff like shoes (if I buy a pair of shoes 3 times as cheap, they will last 3 times as short making it a useless effort spending 3 times as much time fitting them) or pans (always seem to break at around 2 years, even though the frying pans I did get were not exactly cheap either).

From hindsight it's often easier to learn what to avoid, but by that timethese items aren't available anymore anyway most of the time.

Some of these items are really good and they just keep on lasting. But many just aren't up to par even if they aren't the cheapest tier.

I bought a heavy duty non stick roasting tray, and the non stick peeled off after I roast a chicken then put the tray in the dishwasher. Back to old skool enamel oven trays and cast iron cooking pots for me after that 😀

Back on topic, I have about 250 HD floppies to test when I get round to it. I'll be surprised if more than half are good. Plan to use 2M30 to format them to 1.68 MB or as high as DOS can read (or 1.92MB I think is the max if I use the boot sector to enhance int 13h)

I found an offer of a brand new Toshiba Equium 8050S desktop pc for 25 euro's. From what I've found online it contains a Celeron 1.3GHz, 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD. Wondering if it's worth to pick it up..

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 02:26:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:39:

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the m […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:57:

Well, that's why it's called a race to the bottom. Someone in capitalism will always be even more depraved and void of a general sense of honor and decency if they can lower cost somehow. Then all others are forced to do the same, repeat. Also known as a prisoner's dilemma.

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

Sorry, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
If the customer buys a discount rabbit to stew that is actually a dead cat, someone must have already made the conscious decision to sell a dead cat as a rabbit. Ad if the label says 'rabbit' and rabbits used to be rabbits, as honest farmers sold them, but not dead cats they ran over while driving home drunk from the brothel, then the customer is not to be blamed for being cheated, simple as that.

Your example completely misses the point. What you describe is called 'false advertisement'. And 'what the customer wants' usually refers to companies removing features from their product, like the Apple with the headphone jack.

What we are talking about is called 'you get what you pay for' which usually refers to quality.

While prices remain opaque to him and it's his natural impulse to chose lower ones,

But everyone has a brain and can think before following natural impulses. And everyone can learn from prior mistakes.

the customer is entitled to expect an average quality that the state of technology can provide and does not have to expect or check against arbitrary regressions from said quality.

Says who? And what exactly is 'average quality'? The average of all existing products? All sold product? The average between maximum possible quality and zero? And what aspects of a product define its quality-measure? And is everyone obliged to define quality by the same aspects?

Of course, things are not as simple as I made them in that one statement. A higher price is not a guarantee for high quality. And sometimes medium quality is simply good enough or the only thing available. But a LOWER price is pretty much always a guarantee for lower quality. So in general I stand by what I said: If you buy cheap then stop complaining, accept the consequences and learn from your mistakes instead of blaming others.

And that applies not only to technical products but to everything. One prime example is food where the customer talks and acts completely schizophrenic: expects highest standards but wants to pay nothing. At least here in Germany.

I also picked up a Matsonic MS7127C socket 370 motherboard with a Celeron 400 CPU and 128MB RAM. Can't find much about the board but I'm very excited to hook this one up!

bassix6 wrote on 2022-04-14, 12:11:

I found an offer of a brand new Toshiba Equium 8050S desktop pc for 25 euro's. From what I've found online it contains a Celeron 1.3GHz, 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD. Wondering if it's worth to pick it up..

That's not a bad deal even if just for the parts. If the whole system is working and in good shape I'd say grab it.

bassix6 wrote on 2022-04-14, 12:11:

I found an offer of a brand new Toshiba Equium 8050S desktop pc for 25 euro's. From what I've found online it contains a Celeron 1.3GHz, 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD. Wondering if it's worth to pick it up..

Is that a trick question?

bassix6 wrote on 2022-04-14, 12:19:

I also picked up a Matsonic MS7127C socket 370 motherboard with a Celeron 400 CPU and 128MB RAM. Can't find much about the board […]
Show full quote

I also picked up a Matsonic MS7127C socket 370 motherboard with a Celeron 400 CPU and 128MB RAM. Can't find much about the board but I'm very excited to hook this one up!

Product Page - https://web.archive.org/web/20010202171000/ht … com/ms7127c.htm

Search https://www.driverguide.com/ for MS7127C - they have the manual + some drivers & BIOS files

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 12:11:

Your example completely misses the point. What you describe is called 'false advertisement'. And 'what the customer wants' usual […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-14, 02:26:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 01:39:

Yes, that 'someone' is called 'customer'. Everybody who buys the cheaper/noname/chinese rip-off should take a long look in the mirror when searching for that 'someone'.
It's the same story all the time: people buy cheap and then they complain that everything goes south.
(Of course, I'm also one of those who bought cheap disks back then)

Sorry, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
If the customer buys a discount rabbit to stew that is actually a dead cat, someone must have already made the conscious decision to sell a dead cat as a rabbit. Ad if the label says 'rabbit' and rabbits used to be rabbits, as honest farmers sold them, but not dead cats they ran over while driving home drunk from the brothel, then the customer is not to be blamed for being cheated, simple as that.

Your example completely misses the point. What you describe is called 'false advertisement'. And 'what the customer wants' usually refers to companies removing features from their product, like the Apple with the headphone jack.

What we are talking about is called 'you get what you pay for' which usually refers to quality.

While prices remain opaque to him and it's his natural impulse to chose lower ones,

But everyone has a brain and can think before following natural impulses. And everyone can learn from prior mistakes.

the customer is entitled to expect an average quality that the state of technology can provide and does not have to expect or check against arbitrary regressions from said quality.

Says who? And what exactly is 'average quality'? The average of all existing products? All sold product? The average between maximum possible quality and zero? And what aspects of a product define its quality-measure? And is everyone obliged to define quality by the same aspects?

Of course, things are not as simple as I made them in that one statement. A higher price is not a guarantee for high quality. And sometimes medium quality is simply good enough or the only thing available. But a LOWER price is pretty much always a guarantee for lower quality. So in general I stand by what I said: If you buy cheap then stop complaining, accept the consequences and learn from your mistakes instead of blaming others.

And that applies not only to technical products but to everything. One prime example is food where the customer talks and acts completely schizophrenic: expects highest standards but wants to pay nothing. At least here in Germany.

2005... that's the exact year it all went to shit... as far as being able to determine quality from price and whether a name brand meant anything, computers, clothing, everything across the board.

But for some few years after, the "store brand" buyers hadn't caught on to the new extra crappy normal, and were applying older quality expectations. So in that period, you could get a pair of sneakers/trainers/runners for $15 that were more comfortable and held up better than the freshly megacheaped lower ends of lines like Reebok et al at $75 ... but then by the 2008 shakeout if not sooner they realised they should be MUCH cheaper, and reduced quality and store return policy.

Now some of this was creeping in prior to 2005, but 2005 seemed the tipping point, where everything went that way.

There goes my month without retro-shopping 😀
A SB16 Value CT2770 with OPL3. I already expected it to be not in the best condition but it's even worse than I thought.
IPA didn't help a lot. At first I thought it's completely rusty, but it seems it's only on the surface. Any suggestions? The backside is totally fine.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 14:43:

There goes my month without retro-shopping 😀
A SB16 Value CT2770 with OPL3. I already expected it to be not in the best condition but it's even worse than I thought.
IPA didn't help a lot. At first I thought it's completely rusty, but it seems it's only on the surface. Any suggestions? The backside is totally fine.

Let it soak in soapy water for a while, then use an anti-static brush (or just a toothbrush) to scrub it thoroughly. Then make sure that it dries out completely before testing, you can remove water under the chips with compressed air, and IPA is good to push out the remaining water.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:08:

Snarfed a retro GPS, Mio N177 at the thrift, hoping to get this kind of shenanigans going... https://ripitapart.com/tag/miopocket/ ... hoping to have more luck figuring out input devices on this one than that dude had on his magellan.

Good news everyone...

i) it boots ii) the Samsung ARM SOC in this one has 4 UARTs and a USB 1.1 host as well as the USB 2.0 uplink, and SDIO implementation, so between all those, I can hopefully break out something to get keyboard/HID input into it... iii) Samsung supported Linux on this SOC, may not have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous microsoftry, can potentially put linux on it, then have native Doom, Duke and Quake ports etc etc and run an actually good version of DOSbox (Ports on CE and Android suck in various degrees) ... I believe it could run older MAME for 8 bit stuff too.

Okay so initially, I was planning to just jack the screen out of it, before I confirmed it was somewhat hackable, as I'd just been looking at small 4:3-ish LCDs to buy and they've gone from "nobody wants them" cheap, to "rare rare rare" pricing. The idea being then to use screen with an ESP32 for a "DOS" handheld. However, it's looking like it might have just enough functionality and flexibility to work with what it came with.

TheMobRules wrote on 2022-04-14, 14:57:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-04-14, 14:43:

There goes my month without retro-shopping 😀
A SB16 Value CT2770 with OPL3. I already expected it to be not in the best condition but it's even worse than I thought.
IPA didn't help a lot. At first I thought it's completely rusty, but it seems it's only on the surface. Any suggestions? The backside is totally fine.

Let it soak in soapy water for a while, then use an anti-static brush (or just a toothbrush) to scrub it thoroughly. Then make sure that it dries out completely before testing, you can remove water under the chips with compressed air, and IPA is good to push out the remaining water.

Better to use ultrasonic cleaner or if not available - dishwasher is perfect too.

I do wonder what sort of labs some people have, I see things like ultrasonic cleaners mentioned so often!