Need a HD for old system, 10MB to 40MB

[RobertMacy]

Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one in
there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during these
efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either. SATA or
IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to 'boot' after
reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my budget is
EXTREMELY small on this one.

 

[Lee]

On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:

Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one
in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during
these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either.
SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to
'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my
budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.

Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from
China as the UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...

 

[John Robertson]

On 03/26/2015 9:59 AM, Lee wrote:

On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:
Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one
in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during
these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either.
SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to
'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my
budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.




Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from
China as the UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...

Indeed, we have been using the SD adapters to replace dying hard drives
on IDE based arcade games for about a decade. They work very well...

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
(604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

 

[mike]

On 3/26/2015 10:59 AM, John Robertson wrote:

On 03/26/2015 9:59 AM, Lee wrote:
On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:
Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one
in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during
these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either.
SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to
'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my
budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.




Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from
China as the UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...


Indeed, we have been using the SD adapters to replace dying hard drives
on IDE based arcade games for about a decade. They work very well...

John :-#)#

How do you deal with the limited number of writes?
I guess an arcade game doesn't do as many writes as something like
a surveillance camera system???

I've been pulling 40GB drives out of old Tivo's.

 

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015, RobertMacy wrote:

Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need much
memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one in there
has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during these efforts,
thus the small size. Can't remember what type either. SATA or IDA, as I said
this is for an old system. Needs to be able to 'boot' after reformatting with
a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.

Come on, if it's 10 or 40meg, it's either SCSI, or mfm. The latter was
the ones that had the controller that plugged into the bus, and probably
needed jumpers set, and then you had to set things in the bios as to size.
A real complicated process.

It all got easier when IDE came along, putting the controller on the
drive, and the drive kept track of the bad sectors.

Unless your description is off, you're going to have to dig. THose were
crummy old drives, not useful keeping around once better ones came around.
I fiddled with them, but never had one in a main computer. My first hard
drive was an 80meg SCSI for a Mac Plus at the end of 1993. My second hard
drive wsa really the 2gig hard drive in the Pentium I bought used in 2001,
it was IDE.

Michael

 

[John Robertson]

On 03/26/2015 11:04 AM, mike wrote:

On 3/26/2015 10:59 AM, John Robertson wrote:
On 03/26/2015 9:59 AM, Lee wrote:
On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:
Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one
in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during
these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either.
SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to
'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my
budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.




Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from
China as the UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...


Indeed, we have been using the SD adapters to replace dying hard drives
on IDE based arcade games for about a decade. They work very well...

John :-#)#

How do you deal with the limited number of writes?
I guess an arcade game doesn't do as many writes as something like
a surveillance camera system???

I've been pulling 40GB drives out of old Tivo's.

True, these are mostly READ situations. I forgot about the write cycles
issue. Pity you can't use one of the RAMTRON FRAM devices, they have
something like 100 Trillion write cycles these days.

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
(604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

 

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015, Lee wrote:

On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:
Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one
in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during
these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either.
SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to
'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my
budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.




Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE to SD
card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from China as the
UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...


Because the drive is so old it's not IDE (unless it's scsi).

If it was IDE, then he could just get an adapter and a COMpactflash card.

The only hope is that it's an SCSI drive, I would think something larger
would probably fit even if most of it was ignored.

Michael

 

[John Robertson]

On 03/26/2015 11:32 AM, Michael Black wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015, Lee wrote:

On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:
Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't need
much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and the one
in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive during
these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type either.
SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be able to
'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask here? my
budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.




Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from
China as the UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...


Because the drive is so old it's not IDE (unless it's scsi).

If it was IDE, then he could just get an adapter and a COMpactflash card.

The only hope is that it's an SCSI drive, I would think something larger
would probably fit even if most of it was ignored.

Michael

Ah, yes, I recall the MFM drives from the 70s and 80s...pre-IDE indeed!

Well, there is at least one replacement for the old IBM-PC MFM interface
and hard drive:

http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_XT-CFv2_Board

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
(604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

 

[Chris Jones]

On 27/03/2015 05:30, Michael Black wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015, RobertMacy wrote:

Anybody have a Seagate HD and wants it to have a great home? Don't
need much memory, nor want a lot, this is for a dedicted project and
the one in there has turned 'flakey' Every month I reformat the drive
during these efforts, thus the small size. Can't remember what type
either. SATA or IDA, as I said this is for an old system. Needs to be
able to 'boot' after reformatting with a Win98 floppy disk. Why ask
here? my budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.

Come on, if it's 10 or 40meg, it's either SCSI, or mfm. The latter was
the ones that had the controller that plugged into the bus, and probably
needed jumpers set, and then you had to set things in the bios as to size.
A real complicated process.

I have an old 40 meg MFM or whatever, full height 5-1/4" with the
stepper motor to move the heads. I took the lid off and replaced it with
acrylic so I could see the heads moving, and it still worked fine
afterwards - they were not so sensitive to dust back then. I won't send
it though - I like it and also it would cost too much to send.

Chris

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 7:37:18 AM UTC-7, Robert Macy wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 09:59:32 -0700, Lee <cyberwitch@ukonline.net> wrote:

...snip....

Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card?

Great idea, but all the slots are taken for the Project.

So, put the IDE/SATA adapter and a 2.5" SATA drive (or SSD) where the
3.5" drive used to go. It's about $60 to do the deed with new 60 GB
solid state disk, power consumption goes down, speed goes up....

 

[RobertMacy]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 09:59:32 -0700, Lee <cyberwitch@ukonline.net> wrote:

...snip....

Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an IDE
to SD card adapter in there with an SD card? About the same cost from
China as the UK postage for a properly packed 3.5" hard drive...

Great idea, but all the slots are taken for the Project.

 

Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015, Lee wrote:
On 26/03/2015 16:44, RobertMacy wrote:
Can't remember what type either. SATA or IDA, as I said this is for
an old system. Needs to be able to 'boot' after reformatting with a
Win98 floppy disk.

Win98 should be able to handle FAT32, which means you don't have to
stick with really tiny drives if you don't want to. As far as I
remember, the next "artificial" limit you will probably hit is the
540 MB one.

>>> Why ask here? my budget is EXTREMELY small on this one.

There is a local place that takes in old PCs, rebuilds the newer ones
for sale, and sends the old ones to e-waste recycling. I suspect most
such places have a rule that hard disks smaller than X GB go directly
to recycling. If you can find such a place locally, tell them you're
looking for a small hard drive, and then wait a few weeks for them to
collect some, they'll probably sell you a few of them for cheap. The
place here sells loose "small" hard drives (like 30 *G*B) for $5.

Instead of relying on an equally old replacement, why not stick an
IDE to SD card adapter in there with an SD card?

Before this existed, IDE-to-CF adapters were also available... they've
been around long enough that you might find one of them used.

> Because the drive is so old it's not IDE (unless it's scsi).

You could get 40 MB IDE drives. I had a new 386SX in about 1991 that
had one. I know it was IDE, because a couple of years later, I added a
240 MB IDE drive on the same cable.

I *think* you could get 30 MB and possibly 20 MB IDE drives at the time,
but I don't know if there were any smaller than that.

There was also a weird almost-IDE interface that (I think) was 8 bits
wide rather than 16. It used exactly the same 40-pin connector as
"real" IDE, but wouldn't work with "real" IDE drives. Some of the Tandy
desktop models (Tandy 1000?) had this interface on the motherboard.

Matt Roberds

 

[natp]

mroberds@att.net wrote:

Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

Because the drive is so old it's not IDE (unless it's scsi).

You could get 40 MB IDE drives. I had a new 386SX in about 1991 that
had one. I know it was IDE, because a couple of years later, I added a
240 MB IDE drive on the same cable.

I *think* you could get 30 MB and possibly 20 MB IDE drives at the time,
but I don't know if there were any smaller than that.

New IDE drives that support the "Host Protected Area feature set" can
be programmed to lie about their size. I think this feature was added
to ATA to make the huge, new drives work with old, busted BIOSes.