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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : 8" HDD's from the 80's - how to revive them...
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9308 |
This is an interesting video, I thought! 8" HDD from 1980's... This gigantic, heavy, jet-engine type spin-up drive has a whole 32MB. Yes, you read that right - 32MB. ...and here I am contemplating buying another 10TB drive for my server... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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CaptainBoing Guru  Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2076 |
why do I find the look of that centurion so exciting? |
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NPHighview Senior Member  Joined: 02/09/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 200 |
When my wife was doing her PhD, I bought a Z80-based "Vector Graphic" S-100 bus machine to type & edit her dissertation (it had a decent text editor, Memowrite). It came with 8" floppies, but we jazzed it up with a limitless, expansive 5 MB HDD. That add-on cost 10% the price of our recently acquired starter home, as I'm happy to tell our kids. Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now! |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9308 |
There's something satisfying about a guy in 2023, fault-finding and reviving a 40-year old hard-drive, just to see if he can do it more then for any other practical reason. I like these kinds of video.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 6798 |
I like the Bendix valve/tube computer that he's doing up in another video. It's gorgeous! If anyone needs a (large) doorstop or boat anchor I Have a S-100 case (at least I think it's S-100) with power supply in the shed. No cards so it's not a lot of use. I can't lift the darn thing so popping it in the post isn't an option. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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hitsware2 Guru Joined: 03/08/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 713 |
Real Men revive these :   my site |
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Quazee137 Guru Joined: 07/08/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 571 |
Here's a bit of FUN.DIY Paper TapePunch Card Maker and Reader Salt Lake City Police Department was going from cards to magnetic tape back in the early 1970's. I was lucky enough to haul carts of cards to the keypunch operators. Even got a bit of time operating one of the five stations. The operators job was to proof read and correct the cards before sent to tape. Quazee137 |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2136 |
An alternative way to read punched paper tape. In the Win95 era I found some tapes from my time using a DEC PDP8e (Teletype machine as console) but could not remember what was on them. Rather build a reader I scanned them in segments on a flatbed scanner. Then wrote an OCR program in YABasic to read and stitch together the segments. They were just programming exercises to learn the limits of the PDP8. Not worth the effort. Working out how to decode the BMP file header by trial and error took most of the time. No internet in this little town and the local library's non-fiction shelf didn't have much beyond How to Grow Potatoes. |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Grogs, All, That was an interesting video clip, interestingly the SN75110 and SN75107 were the differential drivers I used for over 30 years when I was still working. Now does anyone know where you can get the de-soddering iron used at about the 8min-30sec mark of the video? It looks like it could also be used as a nice de-soldering iron. If not too expensive I wouldn't mind getting one of those it would save time from digging out the bigger unit from its case and setting it up. Regards, Mick Edited 2023-08-12 11:52 by bigmik Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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