test-drb July 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

154 participants
898 discussions

taking care of bad sectors... easy stuff. Was: Re: hard drive data recovery

by higginbo＠netpath.net

I'll bring it back on topic: Spinrite is some powerful hoodoo. I used it alot on Seagate ST-225 drives. I'm never one to use any questionable sectors though: Some of those drives had less than 10mb when I was through with them. I don't trust iffy sectors. At 08:06 PM 7/14/98 -0500, Poesie wrote: >version 5, i got version 4 for about 20 bucks. This is kind of off-topic and >doesn't cover a whole lot of you out there, but when you buy a box of 100 >drives that are all "bad", you can sometimes salvage quite a few of them. - - john higginbotham ____________________________ - webmaster www.pntprinting.com - - limbo limbo.netpath.net -

26 years, 5 months

How many computers?

by higginbo＠netpath.net

At 01:42 AM 7/15/98 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: >My rule is that if it's possible to get a user program in there, it's a >computer. Yes there are marginal cases, but who cares. This is not a 'who's >got the most computers' competition, now is it? It's not??? Dang! I thought I was a shoe in for mister congeneality!!! :) - - john higginbotham ____________________________ - webmaster www.pntprinting.com - - limbo limbo.netpath.net -

26 years, 5 months

hard drive data recovery

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

If you are removing a head arm and working on it, you can wrap everything but the actual connection in clean plastic. I wouldn't expect smoke particles to magically fall off the arm onto the platter, even if the arm is upside down. Plus, smoke travels upwards, and I would expect little of it to settle if you use a fan or something. As soon as you finish soldering, take it back to the clean box, and put it inside to let it cool off or to reassemble (unless it's still smoking). As for doing activities which involve platters, that's a trickier thing. I have no idea what you would do if you had a problem with the motor or the axle on which the platters are mounted. Now, my question. Let's say a single head crashes. This would raise up some dust off the platter, right? Would it be possible to recover the material that wasn't destroyed by the dragging head? What if this deformed the platter? >Serious question. What do you do if you need to resolder a head >connection or something? Do you remove the head assembly from the clean >box, solder it, clean if off with IPA, put it back in the clean box and >reassemble or what? I can't believe you want flux smoke in the HDA. > >> Philip. > >-tony > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 5 months

taking care of bad sectors... easy stuff. Was: Re: hard drive data recovery

by poesie＠geocities.com

well, I personally have never opened up a hard drive, if nothing else because I've never had an extra to pop open (i'm too frugal. hehe.) Regardless, I have found the program "Spinrite" to work great on IDE drives; it goes through and can fix bad sectors, or mark them totally unusable. this really differs from standard formats/etc, because I've been able to take drives w/ 30mb of bad sectors and get it to 0 bad sectors, and still running fine w/ no problems after a year. i believe they are on version 5, i got version 4 for about 20 bucks. This is kind of off-topic and doesn't cover a whole lot of you out there, but when you buy a box of 100 drives that are all "bad", you can sometimes salvage quite a few of them. -Eric

26 years, 5 months

How many computers?

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 98-07-14 11:45:07 EDT, tony duell put forth: << > BTW, how common are PC-jr machines without floppies? Were most of them > upgraded? >> all pcjr machines came with 128k and one floppy drive. i have seen "second story" units that add another floppy drive. it seems to be there used to be an aftermarket for the jr, but a hot-rodded one still wouldnt be as good as a standard xt though. a popular modification was to bring the machine up to 640k by soldering in some dip chips in the 128k add on sidecar thing. i believe IBM has a file on the www searchfiles page that still tells how to do this. david

26 years, 5 months

hard drive data recovery

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

The actual sensor is a sealed unit, just like a transistor or a vacuum tube. You don't even have to tell anybody :) >don't believe the small amount of Am241 in the average smoke detector is >that dangerous if handled carefully, but I can see some people getting >very upset if they found I was stripping down smoke detectors and >modifying them. And I don't need that sort of hassle. > >-tony > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 5 months

How many computers?

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

Well, I think that the default lack of floppy drive was a mistake, as was the lack of RAM. I'm not sure what year it is, but I believe 640K was standard by then. Also, I have the Getting Started manual for the PCjr. It's supposed to be a technical reference with specs, and details on how to prepare it for shipping (like in the IBM PC manual of the same name), but instead it has childish junk on how to use cursor keys (it has a little cartridge game called the keyboard adventure, with a little guy that can move around). Techinicians reeely don't like that. >Apart from the IR keyboard, which was a mistake ;-), it's basically a PC >without the DMA chip, but with better-than-CGA graphics. What's wrong >with it? > >In some ways the lack of a DMA chip is a good thing. There are the right >signals on the expansion bus to add one, with the result that an >expansion module can take over the bus. The PC bus doesn't allow that. > >-tony > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 5 months

Painting Macs (was: fake next)

by mbg＠world.std.com

>or blue I don't consider it a "real" computer. When DEC went to the >black racks and purple lettering (hmm, early 70s?) that was too radical >for me, I was glad to see a return to the traditional beige rack. The 19" racks were generally black... there were attachments to the top of them which were different colors. The purple series was indicative of the pdp-11s (which match the time-frame). I've seen them both with beige side-panels and black side-panels... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry(a)zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg(a)world.std.com | | Digital Equipment Corporation | | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

26 years, 5 months

how many computers?

by mbg＠world.std.com

Maybe I'll provide my full list in a later message, but for now, you can check my 'home_systems' page off my home page... >> DIGI-COMP 1 (an educational toy from 1963) > >Way cool. I had access to one in high school, to play with, but I never >owned one. I've written to Edmund Scientific. They get the occasional >letter inquiring about the DigiComp 1, but so far, not enough interest >to resurrect the product. I concur... way cool. I remember when I was in fifth grade or so, my father ordered one for me. When he received it, he thought it was too complex and simply put it away. One day I came across it, and before he came home that night I had assembled it and was working on some of the programming examples. I have a set of documentation for it (sent to me by someone a few years ago) and I would LOVE to get one for my collection... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry(a)zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg(a)world.std.com | | Digital Equipment Corporation | | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

26 years, 5 months

How many computers?

by ddameron＠earthlink.net

At 06:41 PM 7/14/98 GMT, you wrote: >> I was just wondering, how many computers do all you have out there??? > Not many, 10 to 20, and some I don't know if to count, such as pc boards with a 6802, 2716, and 2 6821 ic's. I think they came from a cash register system. Others like XT motherboards... 1. Mixed brand S-100 System. Either Flashwriter display or serial to Heatkit H19 terminal. Extra crate and misc cards. 2. Various PC clones. I am using a 386 now. No Pentiums or higher. 3. A few Z-80 test computers. 8 or so ic's on a single board. 4. 80188 board computer for "Radio Electronics" Robot. 5. Homebrew game of "life" computer. (1973) 6. Calculator built from neon bulb "shift register counters". Input is a rotary telephone dial. I think subtraction was "1's complements". (about 1968) Interesting peripherals from late 1970's when I was going a lot. 1. SWTP CT-1024 modified for 64 columns and graphics. Hope to get this working again with some computer. 2. Sylvanhills flat bed plotter. Used DC motors and opto-interruptor wheels which I replaced with stepper motors. 3. Stepper motor 3 axis wax carver. Used cylindrical coordinates. The wax block rotated on a turntable. Literature, including First 7 years of Byte. First few years of Dr. Dobbs, the bound volumes, I didn't keep the individual issues. 2 of the Creative Computer games books. 10 issues of "Computer Hobbyist", I have just found the remaining issues. Documentation for Scelbi 8H and other 8008 stuff. Other construction type books. Various parts, including a box of RTL ic's, 1101 memory's. There apparently was an ad in 1967 "CQ" for an RTL computer. >> DIGI-COMP 1 (an educational toy from 1963) > >Way cool. I had access to one in high school, to play with, but I never >owned one. I've written to Edmund Scientific. They get the occasional >letter inquiring about the DigiComp 1, but so far, not enough interest >to resurrect the product. Yes, it would be fun to find things like this. I still have the 3 potentiometer "analog" computer I built for some science fair. The Digicomp I cost $5.95 in 1969 from Edmund Sci. Others were various mechanical (Dr. Nim) and electronic NIM players, Computers like "Brainac", and later in 1971, a National Radio Institute computer using 53 TTL ic's. Have seen only ad's. A RCA projects book I have has a "slot machine" built from individual transistors for flip flops, gates, multivibrators, etc. It "computed" the score, so was a calculator of sorts. Speaking of books, has anyone seen the book "We Built our own Computers" by A.B. Holt, Cambridge Univ. Press, published about 1966. -Dave

26 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 1998