I seem to remember a company way back (when the Mac Plus was considered
a power machine) that used to do custom faux finishes on Macs. The cool
one was the granite macintosh.
I think the company was also the first to make a fishtank out of a Mac
128K
Tony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Owad [mailto:tomowad@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 1998 12:19 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: Painting Macs (was: fake NeXT)
>
>
> >I have this weird idea that one day custom paint jobs on
> computers might
> >make me some extra money. Am I crazy? Do you think there
> would ever be a
> >market for it?
>
> Absolutely! :-)
>
> I'd certainly be interested in a Mac with a neat paint job. It would
> have to be something interesting, though, after all, even I
> cold do solid
> colors. :-)
>
> A while back MacAddict gave away some custom painted Power
> Mac 5100's.
> They weren't very intersting, though, just crazy designs.
>
> Tom Owad
>
> --
> Sysop of Caesarville Online
> Client software at: <http://home.earthlink.net/~tomowad/>
>
This is off-topic, so I'd like to know if anyone would like to start a
short discussion off the list regarding data recovery on crashed hard
drives?
I recently had two hard drives go south on me. One was my 2.5" IDE in my
laptop...scary considering it had all my notes, memos and source code.
The other was a 3.5" IDE on the voicemail system in the office. The
laptop was a physical crash; the voicemail was a soft crash (directory got
over-written somehow).
I took the hard drives to a data recovery shop (Data Recovery Group in San
Leandro for the locals). They have complete clean room and repair
facilities. The data recovery technician, Yongin, opened up the 2.5" HD
in the clean room and found the head had gone bad. He assembled a new
head onto the drive but it wasn't repairable: it was a temporary fix to
get the data off. He then proceeded to extract all the directories I told
him were the most critical. Over all he said he was able to read about
60% of the 1.2GB drive.
The other drive he found had a bad root directory, apparently having been
over-written with random data (I suspect a virus). They basically used
Norton Utilities on that to locate the lost directories and re-link them.
They were able to recover the entire drive contents.
What I wanted to discuss is the possibility of doing home drive repair
without the luxury of a clean room. Is it possible to use some sort of
cheaply available or easily made vacuum chamber with positive airflow and
filtering, or is it absolutely required? Can a drive be opened in room
air and be worked on without introducing dangerous dust particles onto the
platter? Figuring out the data on the drive is the easy part, compared
with actually trying to read the data off the platter, whether the problem
be a failed head or a crashed head.
Why can't they make a hard drive that's crash proof? Even if the
mechanics fail, can't some hardend substance like glass be layed over the
platter so if the head did crash it would only scratch the glass? Then
you would simply open the drive, pull out the platter, replace the glass
shield if necessary, then insert it into a working assembly. The head
calibration would be adjusted to compensate for the extra distance to the
platter.
If anyone would like to continue this discussion, please reply to me
privately. Thanks!
BTW, the above drive repair cost $1,490 total. Not only is the job
challenging and fun, but highly lucrative. Back that data up!
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever onward.
September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 07/05/98]
Why not use a radioisotope and a metal plate, like in a smoke detector?
I think the element could be removed from the smoke detector and wired
into a different circuit that triggers on dust.
>
>I don't know how it works. For high particle counts (like your vacuum
>cleaner), I would guess you could use light scattering. I can't believe
>that would work at class 100 levels, though.
>
>-tony
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
< What we now need is for some brave person (me, Allison???) to take a
< number of old (and dead) drives, make a clean box, pull them apart,
< document everything, and write a repair manual....
Either that or I have to trouble shoot the two maxtor2190s(rd54) I have
with seek spindown death. I know it's not a HDA problem as I opened them
and watch the gyrations.
Allison
>I have this weird idea that one day custom paint jobs on computers might
>make me some extra money. Am I crazy? Do you think there would ever be a
>market for it?
Absolutely! :-)
I'd certainly be interested in a Mac with a neat paint job. It would
have to be something interesting, though, after all, even I cold do solid
colors. :-)
A while back MacAddict gave away some custom painted Power Mac 5100's.
They weren't very intersting, though, just crazy designs.
Tom Owad
--
Sysop of Caesarville Online
Client software at: <http://home.earthlink.net/~tomowad/>
Yes the RJ-11 jack is to hard wire the keyboard. My PC Jr works
wireless okay up to four or five feet then gets flakey. Batteries
don't last long in mine either although it's been a long time since
I've played with it.
Marty
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: How many computers?
Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 7/14/98 11:45 AM
On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
> Remmeber it was supposed to be a _home_ computer. At the time very few
> home computers came with floppy drives.
>
> BTW, how common are PC-jr machines without floppies? Were most of them
> upgraded?
Dunno, mine's got an IBM 360k drive in it. My biggest complaints about are
the 'sidecar' expansion (the second all-time-lamest computer innovation)
and the fact that all backpanel ports are.. BERG headers (the first
all-time-lamest computer innovation).
What's up with the tiny card-edge connectors inside on the motherboard?
I also noticed my keyboard (which is a joke) has an RJ-11 jack off to the
side, and that there's a 2x3 BERG header at the back labelled 'K'. Could
this be for a keyboard cable, heaven forbid?
Also, keyboard battery life is uniformly poor. It seems like I get about
20 minutes. Is this normal?
ok
r.
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From: "R. Stricklin (kjaeros)" <red(a)bears.org>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: How many computers?
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I suppose I'll chime in with my small collection:
Apple ][+ clone (label says "Tel-Com", the keys have CP/M, MBASIC, and
other commands silkscreened onto them)
Apple Lisa 1
Apple Lisa 2/10
DIGI-COMP 1 (an educational toy from 1963)
Osborne 1
Epson QX-16
(seeking more, as always...)
Other stuff:
Televideo 950 terminal
Power Macintosh 6100/66 (maybe as one of the first powermacs it will
have some historical significance someday. Contains a 486 DOS card.)
Generic 586 PeeCee (yawn)
This account is used so mailing lists don't
clutter up Tom's real account. If you really
want to talk to Tom, use tom(at)galena.tjs.org
> I was just wondering, how many computers do all you have out there???
Not so many, others do have far much more than I have.
My little collection:
PDP 11/24 with 2 RL02's, running RSX-11M 4.0, Ultrix-11
PDP 11/34a with 3 RL01's running RSX-11M 4.2, 4.4 and 4.5
PDT 11/150 running RT-11
Mac powerbook 170
HP model G40
VT100, VT520 terminal
Teletype ASR33
Sun Sparc5 (cannot be declared yet as 'classic')
Sun IPX (ditto)
Edward
