VOGONS


First post, by lucky7456969

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The hard drive had a capacity of 6.4GB, forgot which series it belong to.
Just remember it was a quantum fireball.
I want to know the number of cylinders, heads and sectors it had.
Thanks
Jack

Reply 1 of 14, by leileilol

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13,328 cylinders, 15 heads and 63 sectors.

Google's not hard, you know. These numbers fome out of Seagate's support site.

Last edited by leileilol on 2015-08-22, 12:18. Edited 3 times in total.

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long live PCem

Reply 2 of 14, by kixs

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There were several models.

Quantum Fireball ST:
http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgar … h/4000/3546.htm

I can't find for EX and CX models, but they could use the same as ST.

Visit my AmiBay items for sale (updated: 2025-03-14). I also take requests 😉
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Reply 3 of 14, by lucky7456969

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Thanks man!

Reply 4 of 14, by konc

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btw and just for the history, they didn't call those 6.4GB "fireball" without a reason 😁
I cannot confirm it of course but credible rumors state that this particular model was the gravestone for Quantum. From my part, what I do know as I was working for a computer store back then is that an extreme percentage of them were returned within guarantee limits. I mean almost all of them. The earlier 3.2GB etc models were fast and didn't share the same reliability, at least not to that extent.

Reply 5 of 14, by Maraakate

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Yeah I had a couple of these I pulled out of older computers in the early 2000s and all of them died shortly thereafter.

Reply 6 of 14, by Maraakate

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That and those Quantum Bigfoots. Both terrible drives I would never rely on.

Reply 7 of 14, by leileilol

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I have ONE surviving Quantum Fireball 13GB still going...

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 8 of 14, by Maraakate

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leileilol wrote:

I have ONE surviving Quantum Fireball 13GB still going...

Well naturally there's always going to be freak exceptions to the rules 😉

Reply 9 of 14, by Stiletto

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Quantum Bigfoots... had one or two in our tech room we'd frequently use as door stops, hammers... and amazingly we could still read from them following use in that way (for shits and giggles). In their heyday, at least, they were built like tanks... 😁

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 10 of 14, by DonutKing

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I still got a working 15GB Fireball.
I pulled it out of a decommissioned office pc years ago and stuck the drive in a USB external caddy.
After a few years of that I built a win98 box and stuck the drive in there.
Still works today.

Maybe it was only specific models that were dodgy - like the IBM Deskstar 60GXP, was really the only model that had the click of death, but got the whole brand stuck with the 'DeathStar' name...

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 11 of 14, by tayyare

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I personally used many Fireballs of all sizes for years without issues (except a 20GB one that dies on me just at the beginning of a backup session, taking out hours of holiday videos and a couple of thousand family photos with it).

To say the truth, Quantum brand and Fireball models were being considered as a reliable thing where I live and work. Actually, I still have several (some 20GB, 5GB and 3GB versions) in my older builds, working without a fuss.

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 12 of 14, by calvin

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I had a lct10 from 1999 that took until ~2010 to fail. It was a decent enough disk when it worked. My P3 800 has a Fireball in it, and it's *loud*. I need to replace it.

2xP2 450, 512 MB SDR, GeForce DDR, Asus P2B-D, Windows 2000
P4 2.6, 1 GB DDR1, Radeon 9600 Pro, P4P800, Windows XP
Alpha 21164, 512 MB, Permedia 2, KZPCM, AlphaPC 164, NT 4.0

Reply 13 of 14, by ODwilly

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Stiletto wrote:

Quantum Bigfoots... had one or two in our tech room we'd frequently use as door stops, hammers... and amazingly we could still read from them following use in that way (for shits and giggles). In their heyday, at least, they were built like tanks... 😁

I have a 12gb Bigfoot that fails SMART. It was very fun installing Windows 8 to it 😀

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 14 of 14, by pewpewpew

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My surviving Fireball is a TM 2.1GB. Zero bad sectors, currently holding Corel Linux 1.0.