19 Feb
2019
19 Feb
'19
3:10 a.m.
On Mon, 18 Feb 2019 at 22:16, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
One of the moxt common causes of a terrible ear-piercing high whine is the
spindle contact. Many old drives had a springy piece that rubbed against
the end of the spindle. Over time, it would wear a divot, polish that,
and start to squeal. A very light pressure on it would test that
hypothesis. Not enough pressure to muffle the sound, and certaianly not
enough pressure to slow the spindle! Or, pulling up on it, away from the
spindle. Some people claimed that you could just rip it off. Don't.
Best is to twist it very slightly sideways, so that it can start wearing a
new divot.
It was a 3?" EIDE drive. 8GB one, I think, but might have been
smaller. I didn't want to open it to do that, although there was a
time when custom PC builders "de-lidded" hard disks and fitted them
with little acrylic windows so you could see the head move. Not sure
I'd want to trust my data to that...
Well, there don't seem to be many 350 RAMAC disks
still running.
(I'm trying to decide what to use as a base to make a patio table out of a
[crashed] RAMAC 24" platter)
Conceded.
And thank you for the reminder that I'm not old yet.
My first machine with a hard disk was my work PC in my first job: an
IBM PC-AT, with a 20 MB FS/FH 5?" ST-506 drive, probably a Seagate
ST-4026. I added a second drive to the machine, a 15 MB one, and put
Xenix/286 on it.
A few years ago I bought a surplus 2?" 1 TB drive from a chap who'd
bought a new notebook and put an SSD in it before use. So, 2nd hand
but unused.
It cost me CzK 1000, about ?30 at the time.
?30 for a terabyte. I was in a state of shock. It was so tiny, too.
I found an online capacity comparator thing.
You'd need a pile of those Seagate drives the size of a _space
shuttle_ to hold a terabyte.
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/53353.html
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