20 year old WORKING laptop hard drive

[TonyR]

This has little to do with IP cams, etc. but being that most forum members work with PC's, hardware and so on and many remember DOS, Win 3.3, 95 & 98, I wanted to share this.

Recently a client was cleaning up his office and pulled an old Compaq laptop out and wanted me to insure there was no sensitive data on the hard drive. I pulled it out to drill holes through the platter(s) and discard and was surprised to find this: In January, this little Fujitsu turned 20 years old!

It's 2.1 GB (yes, two point one!), is PATA (IDE), 2.5", was made in Jan. of '98 and is 11-12mm thick, not 7.5 or 9. See image below.

I hooked it up to a PATA to USB adapter, plugged into my Dell with Win 7 and it spun up, has data on it, is fully readable / writeable and passes short tests. I didn't have the heart to drill it so I cleaned it with a DoD shredder and formatted to FAT32. Just going to keep it as a paper weight/momento of simpler times.

 

[c hris527]

You sound like me, I have saved a few mainboards, memory, video cards, modems and it goes on and on. I was cleaning my older shop and was looking at some 8088 and 286 stuff i have saved, you remember SIPP memory with the pins..lol hard to believe it been that long.

 

[TonyR]

You sound like me, I have saved a few mainboards, memory, video cards, modems and it goes on and on. I was cleaning my older shop and was looking at some 8088 and 286 stuff i have saved, you remember SIPP memory with the pins..lol hard to believe it been that long.

And putting intel 1702 eProms under a UV light to erase and putting opaque stickers over the their windows when programmed to block UV.
Yep and the older we get, the faster that clock ticks!

 

[tangent]

And putting intel 1702 eProms under a UV light to erase and putting opaque stickers over the their windows when programmed to block UV.
Yep and the older we get, the faster that clock ticks!

last time I did that was about 10 years ago.

remember the old 5.25" HDDs that had a screw that turned the platters if they got stuck?

 

[TonyR]

last time I did that was about 10 years ago.

A lot sooner than me. I'm thinking it was maybe like '80 for me.

remember the old 5.25" HDDs that had a screw that turned the platters if they got stuck?

Not right off hand. But I do recall some 8" floppy drives before the 5-1/4 in. "mini-floppy". My ex worked for Shugart Associates in Sunnyvale, CA several years before its founder Al Shugart left and founded Seagate. Having lived in the area from 1975 to 2004, I saw LOTS of things happening and much techno evolution take place in and around Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Mountain View, Cupertino and Palo Alto. Looking back, it still boggles my mind.

 

[tangent]

A lot sooner than me. I'm thinking it was maybe like '80 for me.

More accurately this was the first and last time I used a UV sensitive eprom.

 

[jmg]

I still have a few shoeboxes hanging around -- AKA, segate MFM drives -- they connected with THREE cables-- power, control, and data. And they were about the size of shoeboxes. A few years ago I was building a 486 machine just for kicks and giggles from old crap I had laying around, happened to have an ISA controller board, powered it up and.. yup, still worked !

 

[TonyR]

I still have a few shoeboxes hanging around -- AKA, segate MFM drives -- they connected with THREE cables-- power, control, and data. And they were about the size of shoeboxes. A few years ago I was building a 486 machine just for kicks and giggles from old crap I had laying around, happened to have an ISA controller board, powered it up and.. yup, still worked !

Oh, yeah...back in the days of beige! Circa '86. There was no PCI, just ISA; no USB, only DB-9 or DB-25 serial ports & Centronics parallel ports, only VGA ports, no HDMI or Display Port; even purple & green PS/2 round keyboard & mouse ports hadn't come into being yet! PC's were practically all metal and that mostly steel, built like tanks and weighed 50 pounds! And no LCD flat screens, just CRT's. I worked on a PC for a surveyor that had a CRT from circa '92 and was, I think, 28 inches and was H-U-G-E! And so deep for the neck of the CRT. I think it approached 80-90 pounds but felt twice that 'cause it had no handles to grasp to pick up. If you got one of your fingers under that tilt/swivel base you could say "adios" to that finger.

Ah, those were (NOT) the good 'ol days!

 

[jmg]

Oh, yeah...back in the days of beige! Circa '86. There was no PCI, just ISA; no USB, only DB-9 or DB-25 serial ports & Centronics parallel ports, only VGA ports, no HDMI or Display Port; even purple & green PS/2 round keyboard & mouse ports hadn't come into being yet! PC's were practically all metal and that mostly steel, built like tanks and weighed 50 pounds! And no LCD flat screens, just CRT's. I worked on a PC for a surveyor that had a CRT from circa '92 and was, I think, 28 inches and was H-U-G-E! And so deep for the neck of the CRT. I think it approached 80-90 pounds but felt twice that 'cause it had no handles to grasp to pick up. If you got one of your fingers under that tilt/swivel base you could say "adios" to that finger.

Ah, those were (NOT) the good 'ol days!

VGA? lol.. my first computer .. an ibm 5150-- had a CGA port!! four color bliss with two equally sickening pallets.
CGA, 640 ram (remember Extended and expanded memory? himem.sys? config.sys and autoexec.bat files?) two 360k floppies and a parallel port.

I remember upgrading the ram -- bought a ram board, and NINE chips (one for parity!) just to get and extra 256k ram (K... kilobytes.. ) Jumped up and down for joy when I reached 1meg of ram. though most of it was useless, and had to be swapped out through that tiny 64k window about 640k using himem...

getting a 5meg mfm hard drive... I went ballistic, only to realize that the power supply in the 5150 was horrible overworked, and the hard drive caused crashes..

 

[TonyR]

VGA? lol.. my first computer .. an ibm 5150-- had a CGA port!! four color bliss with two equally sickening pallets.

That's right! I had forgotten! You are very correct. "Color Graphics Adapter" or the like. Hercules was big then. Funny how the blocky, lo-res 'Minecraft' stuff is attracting the youngsters now days.

(remember ........ himem.sys? config.sys and autoexec.bat files?) two 360k floppies and a parallel port.

And "CD\" , "C:\dir\p" and "del *.* "and so on.
And some had a handle that you rotated 90 degrees after inserting that 360K, 5-1/4" mini-floppy. And some early CD drives had a tray that had to be loaded, unlike the current 'coffee cup holder' style we have now.

More stuff is coming back to me now...dang...it's been well over 30 years; 38 years since I got my Apple ][+ with onboard 48k + 16k 'language card' in 1980. Hey, no way you'd ever need more than that, right? Loaded/saved programs, including Basic, on a Panasonic cassette recorder! Set me back $1,200 and that was 1980 dollars!

Oh, I'm feeling so old!

 

[jmg]

remember....parallel ports?!??!

 

[TonyR]

remember....parallel ports?!??!

Yep...post #8, above: "......no USB, only DB-9 or DB-25 serial ports & Centronics parallel ports."

I don't miss 'em at all, but did use a DOS redirect command to send (parallel) printer text to a file, used old Procomm terminal program to parse that text for a specific string and when found, dial out on 56k modem (serial) and send a text message to a Motorola Bravo alphanumeric pager.

Dang thing worked! The time between when the printer began printing and the pager getting the message (assuming the qualifying text came out of the printer) was less than 10 seconds. Those were 1993 seconds, BTW.

 

[Fastb]

serial ports & Centronics parallel ports.

Too funny. I have some "back in the day" memories:
- Parallel port switches (centronix). With a knob, to an actual electrical switch. (not a switch on the MIS coax or tri-ax network). A real switch, so two computers could share one printer.
---- Assuming your partner re-loaded the tractor feed "pajama paper" with the blue or green faint coloring in horizontal bars.
- I remember "Acoustic Couplers", where you inserted the handset into a, well, I can't find the word... But worked at 300bps?
- 7" single sided floppies, 360K of data, IIRC
- 5" 1/4" double sided floppies. 1K of data, IIRC
- "Winchester hard drives". Six platters, 12" diameter, in a carrier, but exposed the ambient air.
- 2,400 bps modems, and the squelch as they connected.
--- And "Hayes Command Compatible" modem, a plug in board for the IBM defined slots, on your PC motherboard.
- Most changed:
------Then: To add capability, you bought hardware. eg: a pcb to plug into an "expansion slot"
------Today: To add capability, you download software. eg: drivers of sometimes questionable security. ie: The Dahua web browser plug-in requires I turn off Norton.

Those were 1993 seconds, BTW.

1993 Patience is not the same of 2018 Patience!

 

[jmg]

Yep...post #8, above: "......no USB, only DB-9 or DB-25 serial ports & Centronics parallel ports."

I don't miss 'em at all, but did use a DOS redirect command to send (parallel) printer text to a file, used old Procomm terminal program to parse that text for a specific string and when found, dial out on 56k modem (serial) and send a text message to a Motorola Bravo alphanumeric pager.

Dang thing worked! The time between when the printer began printing and the pager getting the message (assuming the qualifying text came out of the printer) was less than 10 seconds. Those were 1993 seconds, BTW.

lol.. ok , missed that.
speaking of printers..
I had a (text only) IBM quiet writer that printed "letter quality" text (and needed a cartridge for each font), and an Epson dot matrix for "graphics."
one of the main advantages of those things... making banners in print shop was easy when the paper was all connected

 

[tangent]

 

[TonyR]

1993 Patience is not the same of 2018 Patience!

And my clock ticks a lot faster at 69 than it did when I was 20!

 

[STGMavrick]

Just going to keep it as a paper weight/momento of simpler times.

View attachment 27162

I found a sealed copy of windows NT while going through my company's "computer equipment cabinet" a few months ago. I didn't have the heart to toss it.

 

[TonyR]

I found a sealed copy of windows NT while going through my company's "computer equipment cabinet" a few months ago. I didn't have the heart to toss it.

Just for giggles I'd put that on eBay to see what it'd bring on bids...who knows...there might be some collector with plenty of $$$ missing only a sealed copy of NT for his personal museum.

 

[jmg]

I still have win nt 3.51 on 3.5" floppies, AND windows 8088 and windows 286 sitting in boxes.. on 5.25" disks

 

[TonyR]

I still have win nt 3.51 on 3.5" floppies, AND windows 8088 and windows 286 sitting in boxes.. on 5.25" disks

Crazy! And I think it took 10 or 12 disks to install the very late version of DOS, like DOS 4.0 or something like that...not sure, as it's been sooooo long ago! LOL