At 05:15 PM 8/26/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> Okay, everyone with a spare IMSAI, let's all get together and have a few
>> "auctions" on e-bay. How about a reserve of $50K, starting bid at $15K,
>> $1K increments. That's just for a box, cards are extra.
>> Jack Peacock
>
>I think I should realy try to evaluate the value of
>one of my Pascal Micro Engines (btw: Has anyone out
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now *that's* historic! Western Digitals first (and last) CPU effort, the
first HLL ever implemented as an instruction set on a chip (afaik, anyway),
rare as hen's teeth (I'll bet it's scarcity is on the order of the Apple I),
not to mention that it was a *very* early 16-bit system that was actually
available to mere mortals.
It was a good idea; but as is so common in this business, the old axiom
held true:
No good deed goes unpunished.
I think WD lost their shirt on this one . . .
Jeff
I agree that there is no cure for stiction but on the older 3 1/2" FF
HDD's I used to gently nudge the spindle flywheel under the drive
board. This would free the head of the platter goo and typically the
drive would spin up and boot at which point a complete backup was
made.
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: I'm Back!
Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 8/23/98 1:25 PM
> certain hard drive of mine won't spin up unless whacked firmly
> against a table? Is there anything I can do? This is a laptop drive. >>
>
> stiction. nothing you can do about it.
>
Actually an ex-friend of mine had a technique to 'sticky' drives. The
theory goes if it's hosed anyway and you need to get data off it, you can
do things to it that you wouldn't ordinarily do and what do you have to lose?
At any rate, I've used it before and it seems to work on X percent of
drives that are totally stuck (especially ones that won't start up even
when whacked). You put the drive top-down (circuit side up) on top of a
nice toasty monitor and just leave it there for several days or weeks. I
don't know if this loosens up some lubricant, expands whatever's sticky
or what but if you take the drive off the monitor and hook it up
immediately and start it up immediately...occasionally you can get it to
spin up and give you your data.
The opposite of this is a drive I had (old Miniscribe 20 meg SCSI) that
would run for about 2 hours, overheat and 'shut down' (it wouldn't spin
down...it'd just start giving errors and was generally useless). I knew
it was heat because I could extend the time-till-shutdown to about 3
hours by pointing a small muffin fan at it. I had NO money at the
time...except for rent money I was flat broke...and couldn't afford to
replace the drive and...seeing how it was 1991 and I live in the
backwater state of Iowa, nobody would loan me a replacement. The Mac SE
it was in was also out of warranty.
At any rate, since it was winter it was cold outside so I wrapped the
drive in a plastic bag, sealed it up with duct tape around the SCSI
cable, set it on the ledge outside the window, closed the window without
squishing the cable and sealed up the crack with duct tape. Left the
machine and the drive on for something like 2 months that way (though my
memory is a bit rusty there) until I could save enough money for a
replacement. I was worried about condensation inside the bag but it
never caused a problem. At one point, the drive slid off the ledge and
was dangling by the SCSI cable and power cable but the duct tape held it
firm. It ran like that for several days until I noticed it wasn't on the
ledge.
On a related subject, I've seen and had several Syquest 40 meg drives
that wouldn't work and wouldn't work and wouldn't work until you flipped
them upside and then they'd work just fine. Not the cartridge...the
whole drive.
Which reminds me...I worked at a typesetting shop once and a guy from
another department walks in and tells me he's accidentally formatted his
syquest cartridge and is there any way to get the data back? So, with a
room full of people who knew better I told him, "Oh yeah...if you just
flip the cartridge over, that'll run it backwards so that if you format
it again, that'll do the reverse of formatting it and you data will be
back." I figured he'd know I was kidding but he DIDN'T and starting
walking away to DO IT! I stopped him fortunately and recovered his data
with proper tools. Of course, a couple months later he thrashed the
innards of a $1500 magneto-optical drive by jamming an 80 meg syquest
cartridge into it REAL HARD. I patiently explained to him that when you
hear snapping sounds and grinding metal you're generally doing something
wrong.
Anthony Clifton - Wirehead
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From: Wirehead Prime <wirehead(a)retrocomputing.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: I'm Back!
In-Reply-To: <57d773ed.35dfd743(a)aol.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
well, I found out none of the NEC versa laptops are for sale;
apparently some VP is holding onto them for some reason. We have maybe
30 7100/66or80 PPC macs; most with 16-32 mb ram, additional vid cards,
token ring. IIci's, about 15? with 20mb ram each. 6 Quadra 950 servers
with typically 2 300mb scsi drives and between 25-50 mb ram. ummm...
maybe 50? or more DuoDocks, both the Duo 230 or 280, and the Dock. don't
know the possibility status of selling these. several sony video
monitors that are touch screens, accept various inputs, came with weird
computerized videodisc systems.
we used to sell these things as scrap, and paid! them to take them, and
then got rebates for 10cents a pound, or sometimes we ended up owing
them. He is actively looking for vendors to buy, so we could probably
make an offer for pallet(s) since I'm the only one doing any work with
them. I will also do the legwork in my spare time, for this.
However, someone else should be the point man, so to speak... I can't
really get involved. I've tried, believe me. I'll try to do some more
inventory type stuff... But there's alot. Also a whole room full of an
IBM 3480? mainframeish type of thing, with disk boxes etc. looks like a
room full of washing machines...
-Eric
> Know those lame "JoeBob's_Random_Browser_NOW!" buttons?
> I slightly edited one (Yes, this is relevant.)
> Go look at http://makoto.umtec.com
> This is really interesting coming from my MicroVAX...
> I think I'll do a ITS-NOW! button next, with a link to a copy of "The HACRTN"...
36 Bits Now ?
Let me guess - You own one of these nice old BULL minis
using 9 Bit Bytes ?
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
It's a really wacky IC. It's a 68 pin package.
Looks kinda like this
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| +----------+ |
| +-----+ | | |
| | | R | | |
| +-----+ | | |
| +----------+ |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Both the boxes are ceramic squares (grey ceramic, like an eprom or
something). The little R looks like a surface mount resistor or cap. The
bigger ceramic square has:
SMS300-1
0002624
001 A 7620 on it
The field of the chip is white with grey zebra stripe lines running to
each of the pins. On the top of the IC is screened:
00020730001C
In gold and on the bottom:
SMS INC 2075-0001
In black.
What the heck is this thing?!?!? I know it's probably an engineering
sample, but of what?
Tony
<On the other hand, one of the outer tracks - the one that contains the
< directory - is accessed much more frequently than any other. It is ther
< that I have experienced the greatest number of failures.
Oh so true.
As mentioned any "open" drive like floppies and older carts the end points
of the travel is more suspect than the bulk of the length.
Allison
< I have a couple of cards that are exactly the reverse of what you plan.
< They are 3.5" form factor, and built by WDC for Compaq. I can only
< conclude that Compaq needed more IDEs than were available at one time,
< early on.
Going from IDE to MFM/RLL is trivial. scrounge up a 100x ATA bus
controller and hang it on. Same idea as the article using the xt 8bit
1002.
The original plan was to figure out the protocal the parallel port
SQ270 (internally ide) disk uses.
Allison
I remember someone asking here about VLB ethernet cards (long time ago)...
So, here: http://www.ahhz.com/dspecial.htm
10 pack for $20 :)
af
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adam Fritzler |
afritz(a)delphid.ml.org | Animals who are not penguins can
afritz(a)iname.com | can only wish they were.
http://delphid.ml.org/~afritz/ | -- Chicago Reader
http://www.pst.com/ | 15 Oct 1982
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On <http://webreview.com/wr/pub/98/07/31/frames/index.html>,
Michael Swaine (of Dr Dobbs early days) writes:
>
>When I first started writing full-time about computer
>technology back in 1981, I worked with some suspicious
>characters who have gone on to become legends in their own
>minds. Folks like John Markoff, now holding the New York
>Times to its well-known high standard of accuracy on all
>topics technical, and John Dvorak, ubiquitous curmudgeon
>and loose cannon on the media deck. At that time Dvorak
>was launching a new column called Inside Track, and he
>explained to me the hidden significance of the title:
>
> "On disk platters," he said, "the inside track
> is the least reliable one."
>
>It was a very popular column.
Of which ancient systems was this true?
Today's CD-ROMs are the opposite, I've heard: as the head positions
to the outermost area of the disc, it tends to push dust along the
guides, and many CD drives accumulate a pile of dust out there,
preventing it from reaching "the end."
- John
Just a quick reninder:
Friday August 28, tequilaberries, 6:00pm
Please let me know if you are planning to attend, I'll be there early to
reserve a table.
Francois
-------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the desperately in need of update
Sanctuary at: http://www.pclink.com/fauradon
