Computer nostalgia - Post your relics!

[researcher]

I don't remember the Deathstar drives smoking, just dropping dead. There have been SO MANY examples though! Remember the Fujitsu 40GB hard drives that dropped like flies? I remember taking them back to the depot for warranty and there were literally skids of thousands of these drives being returned, it was unreal.

The Maxtor drives used to have the bearings go out of them and then they'd whine.

Remember the Quantum "Big Foot" 5.25" drives? They were glacially slow, but dirt cheap.

More recently of course (out of the nostalgia era) we had the Seagate 7200.11 I think it was, that failed in huge numbers?

thanks for refreshing my memory.. yup the deathstars just stopped working. From what I've heard Fujitsu bought out IBM's drives, they were great performing drives, just fix the dying part.. Then I heard Toshiba bout out Fujitsu's holdings. Cool.. I just bought a new Toshiba HDD, performance is good.. should be it's the deathstar's lineage minus the death.. lol!

I had the maxtors they were whiner all right, but it's funny the nostalgia.. hearing that whine come on in the morning, to check my email befor going to college.. fun!

oh heck.. the 7200.11 a number that will live in infamy!! it's what made me never to go back to seagate! and yup quantumn.. slow but big.

 

[OVERKILL]

View attachment 185618
I have this 10GB bigfoot, I think after I got done using it as a prop to make jokes about finding Bigfoot sneaking in my Windows, I ended up sticking it in my Pentium Overdrive system running Windows 98Lite and an old version of Debian or Slackware from back when the 2.2 kernel was relevant.

You had an overdrive? I was always looking for one that I could put in the Math Copro socket on my 486 SX/25!

 

[researcher]

I really don't know much about them I them, I think they were some system integrator that's parent company went bankrupt by the early 2000s. I love the cross hairs on the O in their logo though.
https://web.archive.org/web/19971009195726/http://www.pionex.com/

lots of companies were popular, then bam! gone.. the whole internet company bubble bursting happened around 2001 or so.. and lots of companies folded. Back then I went with a dell (1997, 233mmx) instead of pionex..

 

[OVERKILL]

lots of companies were popular, then bam! gone.. the whole internet company bubble bursting happened around 2001 or so.. and lots of companies folded. Back then I went with a dell (1997, 233mmx) instead of pionex..

When I was at UNB, there was a computer company that sold pre-builts out of Moncton, and I can't for the life of me remember their name, but they were VERY popular in the maritimes at the time, due to the "value" angle they went with their systems. I'll see if I can find the website if the name comes to me. They used the Quantum Bigfoot drives in their systems, lol.

 

[blufeb95]

You had an overdrive? I was always looking for one that I could put in the Math Copro socket on my 486 SX/25!

I'm not sure that the Pentium Overdrive would work in the 487 socket, I think the 487 socket is just the a 486 3 row socket (socket 1) with an extra pin to disable the original CPU, you need a later socket 2 or 3 board with 4 rows of pins to run a Pentium overdrive.

 

[blufeb95]

lots of companies were popular, then bam! gone.. the whole internet company bubble bursting happened around 2001 or so.. and lots of companies folded. Back then I went with a dell (1997, 233mmx) instead of pionex..

I hadn't heard of Pionex until I picked up that one system, but apparently they had a decent retail presence.

 

[OVERKILL]

I'm not sure that the Pentium Overdrive would work in the 487 socket, I think the 487 socket is just the a 486 3 row socket (socket 1) with an extra pin to disable the original CPU, you need a later socket 2 or 3 board with 4 rows of pins to run a Pentium overdrive.

I might be thinking of the 486 Overdrive CPU:

 

[mk378]

Math Copro socket on my 486 SX

That "coprocessor" was actually a complete 486DX. When you plugged it in, the SX (typically soldered to the motherboard) would completely shut down-- all processing was handled by the new chip.

Intel made a TV commercial to sell them, it showed the inside of a PC with the second processor socket having a neon "VACANCY" sign over it like at a motel.

The Overdrive replaced an existing 486 bringing some Pentium core features to old machines. This was not a big seller since a few dollars more to swap to a true Pentium motherboard along with your expensive Pentium chip brought a lot more performance.

 

[OVERKILL]

That "coprocessor" was actually a complete 486DX. When you plugged it in, the SX (typically soldered to the motherboard) would completely shut down-- all processing was handled by the new chip.

Intel made a commercial to sell them, it showed the inside of a PC with the second processor socket having a neon "VACANCY" sign over it like at a motel.

Yup, I recall that.

 

[Carmudgeon]

I forget when and how it was "purged," but I used to have an Osbourne 1 in the closet. Or maybe it's still buried in there somewhere, like my Mac SE.

Encountered Stewart Cheifet (of Computer Chronicles fame) at the airport years after the show ended, but didn't approach him. His co-host, Gary Kildall, died of mysterious circumstances.

My Apple ][ with the Z80 card is defintitely long gone.

Seeing a UNIVAC and System 360 on display at the Deutches Museum in Munich makes one appreciate how far things have progressed. They also have a Cray.

Quantum drives were my go to, and the vendor of choice for drives, enclosures, and SCSI stuff was APS in Kansas City. Micropolis drives were the DeathStars of their day. My Mac 8600 came with a Zip drive standard, but knowing their reputation, it went largely unused.

 

[IveBeenRued]

I remember setting up or troubleshooting people’s cable modems and reformatting malware ridden Windows 98 boxes until I had enough money to go to CompUSA to buy this:

All so that I could play:

 

[brianl703]

The Maxtor drives used to have the bearings go out of them and then they'd whine.

I remember getting warranty replacements for Maxtor drives that were whining fresh out of the box. The warranty replacement drive would be whining.

 

[brianl703]

From what I've heard Fujitsu bought out IBM's drives

It was Hitachi.

 

[researcher]

It was Hitachi.

Thank you for correcting me! Yup it was Hitachi.. And then Toshiba bought out Hitachi's drive division.. Ok good my mind isn't that far gone well not most of it.. lol

 

[OVERKILL]

OK, snapped some more pics last night!

First up, misc drawers of random crap, including some BNC networking stuff. Remember when all the cases came with keys? I believe that Kingston RAM module might be for a Mac Powerbook?

For @Pablo, an ISA VGA card, complete with DIP switches! Circa 1988.

The RHCE bible:

 

[OVERKILL]

Some old hard drives:

Maxtor IDE from 1995:

And, if one recalls my mention of a 7-drive RAID 5 array, here's one of those SCSI drives, dated 1998:

 

[OVERKILL]

Seagate tape backup drive:

 

[OVERKILL]

The GW-BASIC manual that came with my 8088:

 

[OVERKILL]

And, @blufeb95 an old Socket 7 board (and not a very good one, lol). Has both ATX and AT power connectors, takes both EDO and SD-RAM:

I believe I have a Cyrix CPU that may work in this board, may dig that up.

 

[researcher]

And, @blufeb95 an old Socket 7 board (and not a very good one, lol). Has both ATX and AT power connectors, takes both EDO and SD-RAM:
View attachment 185752

I believe I have a Cyrix CPU that may work in this board, may dig that up.

wow it looks soo small!!