First post, by flynth
So I've recently ordered a couple of old hdds from a blurry photo posted by someone selling "old stuff". The price was OK (not very low, but certainly not high) so I decided to get them hoping for some old IDE drives. Out of 4 drives I did get 2 ide drives (40mb and 400mb). I also got two 40mb MFM drives. A seagate St251 and a nec d51466.
I don't have any mfm controllers and the prices people attempt to sell them at (especially with cables) seem a bit bonkers to me(usually they are unsold). But there is an odd seller every couple of months that sells one for more reasonable price. I've recently bid on one controller that mentions st251 as one of the disk's supported in its manual(no cables unfortunately, but I can make those). If I get it I should be able to test those drives.
So now my question and the reason for this post. Not being that interested in mfm hard drives what would people advise me to do with them? Put them up for sale "untested" (I'm not a huge fan of doing that), try getting matching controllers/cables, testing, then selling (hopefully at least covering all costs and hope being they'll be at least useful), or trying to run them in my 386? That would be era appropriate, but it may be months/years before I get right controllers. Or, just put them in storage "for future use", looking at them every now and then and hoping they go up in value in next 30 years?
What do you do with stuff like that?