I also received a low cost PCI VGA card today. £1.20 (+ 3 pnp)

Will be going in my 486 build Re: 486 DX4 100 Build log.

SHARP MZ-1M01 16-bit card with 8088 for old 8-bit Z80 computer SHARP MZ-2000.

New HW found!

1. Micropolis ST506 - 85MB - 1985 - 5.25" MFM HDD - full height. 900435-01-7B - Rated Input Power 32W!!! 😁 Someone opened the HDD for who knows what reason. The top platter is scraped a little but there is no r/w head there, so the chances are that it is still ok. I found some case screws that fit perfectly and after I gently used an air compressor to clean it, I put the lid on, never to be opened again. Ideally I would've needed some screws with a sunken head but these are good too and they also look the part. 😁 At first I thought that some exotic screws would be needed but in the end it was a case of regular chunky threaded screws. Well, a beast like this doesn't need flimsy stuff bolted to it. 😁
2. MagTron Inc MT-4170S - 170MB - 5.25" SCSI HDD - half height. 2 pieces
3. Gainward Silent Copper nVIDIA 6800GT PCI-E
4. Shuttle Spacewalker AK32V2.1 - VIA KT266 - The "good" chipset! 😁 Who in their right mind would prefer the KT266A?!?!??! 😁
5. Finally an ASROCK 4CoreDual-SATA2 REV. G/A 2.00

I tested the HDDs and they powered up nicely. For the SCSI HDDs I have a suitable motherboard and add-on cards to test them, but for the MFM HDD I have nothing to try it on. Read write heads activity could be heard.

After 30 minutes of running the sound they made became better and once they were "hot and toasty" I enjoyed them so much more. Music to my ears. 😁 Imagine running something like this every day. 😀

Micropolis has rubber bumper sticking issue when it self-park when off. Watch for that. Happened even back in the day!

Cheers,

Good to know. 😀 For the time being I have no means to put it to use and it will stay in storage for the foreseeable future. Who knows when I'll power it up again.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-09-06, 01:05:

Micropolis has rubber bumper sticking issue when it self-park when off. Watch for that. Happened even back in the day!

Cheers,

Is that only with their MFM drives? I have a massive Micropolis SCSI drive I pulled from an external enclosure and I have no idea if it works or not because the enclosure didn't seem to work.

Frequently we find that the disk pack, all the mechanics, was the same across a manufacturers MFM, RLL, ATA and SCSI drives of similar vintage and capacity.

Picked up one of these. Appears to be complete with all manuals, 5.25" and 3.5" disks, and the DB25 adapter. Mouse looks unused.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-06, 15:07:

Frequently we find that the disk pack, all the mechanics, was the same across a manufacturers MFM, RLL, ATA and SCSI drives of similar vintage and capacity.

I mean, this SCSI drive is among the last drives Micropolis ever made and has a capacity of like 4.3GB, so it wouldn't be the same mechanism, but I do know Quantum had their rubber bumper issue across a variety of hard drive capacities, from 40MB up to like...250MB.

If it weren't for the slightly worn box that mouse looks like it was manufactured yesterday. Very nice!

EvieSigma wrote on 2021-09-06, 14:32:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-09-06, 01:05:

Micropolis has rubber bumper sticking issue when it self-park when off. Watch for that. Happened even back in the day!

Cheers,

Is that only with their MFM drives? I have a massive Micropolis SCSI drive I pulled from an external enclosure and I have no idea if it works or not because the enclosure didn't seem to work.

For the type of chassis (this type of cover) with voice coil actuator design like the picture posted, yes.

Cheers,

No. Quantum did not have rubber issue. These early 3.5" quantum drives run hot and ruins these platters' coatings to wear off quickly and heads sticks to platters. Easily solved with a quick twist right after turning power on. This is due to case designers not accounting for hot running hard drive needs some air flow.

I always disassemble stuff to find out why even back in the day with dead drives too.

Cheers,

Won a 3Com EtherLink III + 33.6K modem PCMCIA card with the manual, driver diskette, and the dongles for both the modem and 10-BaseT Ethernet with the BNC token ring.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-09-06, 18:08:

No. Quantum did not have rubber issue. These early 3.5" quantum drives run hot and ruins these platters' coatings to wear off quickly and heads sticks to platters. Easily solved with a quick twist right after turning power on. This is due to case designers not accounting for hot running hard drive needs some air flow.

I always disassemble stuff to find out why even back in the day with dead drives too.

Cheers,

Oh right, the rubber bumper thing was a Conner issue, I think. Apple used both Quantum and Conner drives in the old "68k" Macs so I mixed up the problems the drives have.

I managed to resurrect an 80MB Quantum drive in a Macintosh LC III by removing the top cover, gently rotating the platters back and forth via the central hub to release the stiction, and putting it back together. Won't last forever but it works for testing.

Found strange laptop on the local market, marked just as "notebook" on the lid, model 8700T, ID: L4PK8000X15, made in Taiwan by Kapok Computer Co (found that later). The original Pentium MMX is replaced with K6-2 at 400MHz. 2x64MB RAM, Chips B65555A video card, ES1879S+ES692S audio, built in FDD and CD. Battery still holds some charge after refresh with Imax B6. The problem is that I have no charger and charging port is strange 4 pin connector, so I need some help if someone knows how to connect it. Here are some pics:

Got this Medion GeForce4 MX460 yesterday. Took an hour to troubleshoot, since it caused crash under Windows XP and 2000 when NVIDIA driver loaded, but fortunately a BIOS update solved the issue.

Front panel and a modem/firewire card was just a bonus.

wiretap wrote on 2021-09-06, 15:47:

Picked up one of these. Appears to be complete with all manuals, 5.25" and 3.5" disks, and the DB25 adapter. Mouse looks unused. […]
Show full quote

Picked up one of these. Appears to be complete with all manuals, 5.25" and 3.5" disks, and the DB25 adapter. Mouse looks unused.

Ergonomics look horrendous (but I'm biased - I'm a fingertip trackballer), but wow, that's one pretty bit of mid 1990s legacy 😀

EvieSigma wrote on 2021-09-06, 17:35:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-06, 15:07:

Frequently we find that the disk pack, all the mechanics, was the same across a manufacturers MFM, RLL, ATA and SCSI drives of similar vintage and capacity.

I mean, this SCSI drive is among the last drives Micropolis ever made and has a capacity of like 4.3GB, so it wouldn't be the same mechanism, but I do know Quantum had their rubber bumper issue across a variety of hard drive capacities, from 40MB up to like...250MB.

Back around 1997 I built a SCSI disk array out of a bunch of Micropolis 9gb. drives. I think it was 8 drives. We purchased them at Fry’s electronics mainly because they were inexpensive.
But they worked good they where just loud. Used then in a WinNT 4.0 server external disk array in an HP enclosure.

SteveC wrote on 2021-08-16, 19:24:

Won this on eBay today - the ThinkPad (560Z) potentially doesn't work but I'm more interested in the cool CD ROM drive 😀

A few weeks later it finally turned up - Another laptop fix - Thinkpad 560 with a pretty cool CD ROM drive

I finally got this ThinkPad "iSeries" (Type 2621) after *twelve days* spent mostly lost in transit, can't figure out why it won't POST. The only thing I can think of is that it somehow NEEDS a working CMOS battery to boot? I've already cleaned the RAM and the RAM slots, and since the CPU is soldered I can't really clean that with the equipment I have. The fact that I hear the hard drive kick on but nothing else happens just makes it more confusing.