>
>Subject: Re: Now hard drives too. Re: Modern floppy disk question...
> From: Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com>
> Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 18:38:52 -0400
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>>>>>> "Allison" == Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> writes:
>
> Allison> Ive found anything .0 is suspect and the latest and greatest
> Allison> HD of the max size is susceptable.
>
>We've found that this is not necessarily true.
>
>Also, I don't think you can ever buy anything else. Drive generations
>follow one another very quickly, and manufacturers only sell the
>latest generation, whatever that is any particular quarter. A smaller
>than max size drive is either the max size of the previous generation,
>or simply a drive with fewer platters and heads than the max currently
>available.
Well I"ve had too many bad experiences. I was sole IT for a small
company for 5 years and down time was not a condition that was acceptable.
So when the latest and greatest came out I was 6 months to a years behind
it. Getting drives one or even three generatiosn back as NOS was not a
problem. That was easy is that by 6 months to a year you were hearing what
was problematic or unusually good. Also by then I could get a better price
and our needs never grew as fast as they new tech could produce so space
was always in excess.
Notable really bad drives.
St251 40mb runs hot, dies early.
Wren 3.5" half height. Had 6 given to me working
all died within a year save one.
Various Prodrives, up and down QA.
various Segate IDE, up and down QA. If it was
good after a year it would likely last well past the
time it was too small.
WD during the time of the 300-500mb drives, good
drive design, bad QC. Those that failed were early life
those that didn't corak early still work.
Segate 3.2gb IDE first version, really bad 80% failure in
90 days. Whole lot returned for -A version.
Maxtor 9gb scsi, failure rate 50% per year, sample 16 drives
in use and warrenty replacements for not less than 4 every
6 months. After two years ALL 16 replaced with seagate 37GB no
failures at 1.5 years.
Noteably good drives:
St225 I have a bunch and they are workhorse.
Quantum D540 31mb I have 14 of them all with 5+ YEARS
runtime all still running.
Maxtor 2190 (mfm 153mb aka RD54).
Fujitsu 500mb IDE
Toshiba 500mb 2.5" IDE, unbreakable.
Various Segate 3.2GB 32011A was good, non A was bad.
WD 4.3GB IDE a time tested winner. cheap too.
Seagate 2600020A 60GB IDE, put 20 in service and
All still running at 2years in business desktop use.
DEC RZ55 680mb 5" full height scsi. Ihave 14 of them
in use that were pulls and still work fine after years of use.
Seagate 1gb SCSI
Segate Baracudas 1gb -> 4.3 noisy but reliable.
Plenty of others as well.
Allison
Ok, these are the fixes done till now:
- added a notice on the homepage asking to help me to fix the credits
- removed the commodore 232 pictures, Cameron can you help me ?
- removed the copyright notice, now there is a "NO copyright" notice.
Freely usable is intended the images and the scanned material that I done
myself, and the concept is to mirror all the interesting material because
the sites will not be there for ever as you know.
I am not always the owner of the original manuals that I scan and I don't
want to be the owner of the scanned manual, I want to share these infos with
other people who has my same interests.
Mirroring mirroring and only mirroring, I don't sell nothing and I don't
earn nothing.
Tix
www.1000bit.net
Anyone know why modern floppy disks are such total junk? They seem to
often develop problems after only one or two writes - whereas back in
the day they were always pretty reliable.
I can't imagine the people who made these things threw out all the
decent equipment and replaced it with something made out of snot and
string. Presumably it's a quality control issue?
About 25% of Sony branded floppies seem to die on the first format,
which is nice...
Maybe it's a cunning ploy by the manufacturers to make otherwise-awful
blank CDs look better :-)
(I'm trying to remain cheerful here whilst attempting to find a floppy
that actually works 100%...)
Hi to everybody,
I am the webmaster of 1000bit.net site, I am here to answer about the
pictures problem you are talking about.
First of all, I would like to tell you something about me.
I am involved in this hobby since the beginning, every computer I bought is
still with me. I am one of the organizer of vintage computer events in
Italy, last year we setup the first Vintage Computer Festival in Italy,
thanks to Sellam.
My site is online since 1998, under different urls, and this is really a
long time in internet era. In all this time many things are changed and my
policy about the use of the pictures is changed too. On my site there are a
lot of my own pictures, a lot of users pictures, a lot of pictures taken
from
online auctions and some pictures sent by users.
As you can see on my site there isn't any "copyright notice" or "picture
policy", so all the material present on the site is absolutley freely usable
and downloadable from anyone, beacuse is intended right in this way.
In the last years I have choosed to keep track and so to give credits to any
pictures that i found on the net, but the older ones actually doesn't have
any kind of credits or references.
In all these years no one asked me to remove pictures or something else.
Finally, please don't get angry if you want that I remove "your" picture,
just drop me an email or better I can give you the credits to you or your
site without any kind of problems.
My english is worse than "little rough" (thanks Dwight :-))), but I hope my
intent is clear.
Tix
www.1000bit.net
Dear Community,
Free to a good home (knowledgeable collector):
Grinnell GMR270 Image Processing System with documentation
Location: Upper Manhattan
Condition: Previous owner said it worked when it was last turned on.
-kurt
Due to the inability of more one individual to follow up on 'firm'
commitments, I must now dispose of a Honeywell DPS-6
mainframe and matching 9Trk tape drive.
This is "free, come and get it" - and there are loading facilities
on-site to do this. It will easily fit in the bed of most
full-sized pickup trucks. We just need it to go away, fast.
This gear is located in the Carson City area of northern Nevada - about
a 5 hour (beautiful!) drive from the Silicon Valley.
It wieghs all up about 600 pounds. For the right amount of bribe-money,
I'd even consider delivering it myself.
OTHERWISE, this equipment will be broken up for scrap and the cabinets
taken to the junk yard - it is in storage at a friend's
and he needs the space the computer is currently taking.
If there is no interest by this time next week, we're going to get out
the torches and the chainsaws - there are no other
options.
Speak up, Folks! Don't make me have to kill a rare machine!!!
Cheers
John
Today while checking out the bus I found a digital VaxServer 4000-200 and a
R215F cabinet with drives on the floor under a pile of stuff. Not sure of
the working condition yet, anyone have some info on the VaxServer? Thanks
> From: "Witchy" <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk>
> > Anyone have pointers to the manuals on the net.
>
> I've got some GIGI manuals on my webserver somewhere if you get stuck.
I would be interested as I bought one many years ago from Monash
University and never had any manuals. Its been sitting in storage for
years in my shed as I never had any info or a display.
Regards,
Garry Page
>
>Subject: Re: Mystery board
> From: joe heck <trash3 at splab.cas.neu.edu>
> Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 07:37:36 -0400
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Well, I cannot tell exactly what it is, but there are lots of clues:
>
>Not Qbus, it's a hex board. Well, I have actually seen some custom
>backplanes that are six wide and use qbus cards, but that is pretty rare.
>
>Very few external connectors that I can see. Probably not disk/tape.
>
>At least three types of memory, although I cannot read the numbers. It
>looks like a bank of 8 dynamic memory chips, then three static ram and
>finally an EPROM. I'll bet on the top edge is the Z80, but the I/O chip
>next to it (if that is what it is) would give some more clues.
>
>It would be good to see if the crystal is divided for various baud
>rates, and if the connector on top has 8 bits or is serial. the missing
>chip on the upper left might be serial i/o. best guess, some sort of
>intelligent slave serial communications I/O processor.
>
>But it's just a guess.
>
>Joe Heck
>
>Charles wrote:
>
>> I have an unknown hex-height board which was included in a
>> miscellaneous lot of PDP-8A boards I recently purchased. But there
>> is no manufacturer's info except what looks like "K-3VO" in the
>> lower left corner, where there is a strange looking clamp-on
>> connector. Nothing is engraved on the metal "handles". There is a
>> Mostek 3880 (Z80 CPU) at the upper right, too. Date codes on all
>> the chips are '82 - '83.
>>
>> Here is a link to a picture of it:
>> http://img2.imageweb.info/img2/6gj14927.jpg
>>
>> and a closeup:
>> http://img2.imageweb.info/img2/aqw15714.jpg
>>
>> Anyone know what this board is?
>>
>> thanks
>> Charles
>>
Another SWAG is a cp/m board for a UNIBUS VAX class system.
Actually got to use one once.
Allison
Hi to everybody,
I am the webmaster of 1000bit.net site, I am here to answer about the
pictures problem you are talking about.
First of all, I would like to tell you something about me.
I am involved in this hobby since the beginning, every computer I bought is
still with me. I am one of the organizer of vintage computer events in
Italy, last year we setup the first Vintage Computer Festival in Italy,
thanks to Sellam.
My site is online since 1998, under different urls, and this is really a
long time in internet era. In all this time many things are changed and my
policy about the use of the pictures is changed too. On my site there are a
lot my own pictures, a lot of users' pictures, a lot of pictures taken from
online auctions and some pictures sent by users.
As you can see on my site there isn't any "copyright notice" or "picture
policy", so all the material present on the site is absolutley freely usable
and downloadable from anyone, beacuse is intended right in this way.
In the last years I have choosed to keep track and so to give credits to any
pictures that i found on the net, but the older ones actually doesn't have
any kind of credits or references.
In all these years no one asked me to remove pictures or something else.
Finally, please don't get angry if you want that I remove "your" picture,
just drop me an email or better I can give you the credits to you or your
site without any kind of problems.
My english is worse than "little rough" (thanks Dwight :-))), but I hope my
intent is clear.
Tix
www.1000bit.net