The tinkerer is at it again.....
Apr. 18th, 2005 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1Most people throw out computer equipment when it gets too old. Not me. I try to get it working again, and keep it working. So what if it's slow and puny.
As a diversion from doing my taxes last week, I upgraded my laptop computers. Not wholesale upgrades, mind you. Little pieces-parts upgrades -- memory, hard drives, accessories, etc.
Here's where part of my anticiated refund is going. And no, these purchases are not listed in chronological order.
First off, I wanted a portable external hard drive to back up my laptops. I think buying the case and the drive separately is cheaper than buying an assembled external unit. Plus I can swap out the drive at a later date, and reuse the case.
Knowing the success I've had with the Macally cases, I picked up a Macally PHR-250CC for laptop drives. This case has an aluminum exterior, and the drive can be powered by a USB port. It has its own leatherette slipcover, which should fit easily in a laptop bag. List price is about $50.
I tried fitting my laptop hard drives into the new case, and lo and behold, the drives are too big. The enclosure is designed for drives that are 9.5 mm high. Mine are 12.5 mm high. And so, several days later, I went online to the Dirt Cheap Drives website. I found a nice Hitachi 20 Gb drive for about $75. And it's the right height (9.5 mm). So, for just over $125, I have 20 Gb of portable external storage. Hoo-rah!
And now, I can move on to the first patient: my old laptop, aka "Tardis Mark I" -- an NCR 3180 Safari, which contains an Intel i486/33SL processor; 32 Mb memory; and a dead 2 Gb hard drive. I picked it up second-hand in either '97 or '98 for $600. I souped it up with the larger memory, the larger hard drive, Windows 95, and a CD-ROM in the docking station. (When it was brand new in '93, the asking price was $5000.) When I bought another laptop in '01, I put the NCR in storage. Since I pulled it back out last year, it has become a plaything for The Girl. I thought, "Let's fix it up so it's more usable for her, but I'm not going to spend a lot of money on it."
The first problem: A hard drive transplant. Last year, when I pulled the laptop out of cold storage last year, the hard drive began to fail. It developed bad sectors, which grew like a cancer across the disk. Eventually the entire drive failed. Earlier this month, I found a cheap Toshiba 814 Mb hard drive on eBay, which is tiny by today's hard drive standards, but for a 12-year-old laptop running Windows 95 B, it's ideal. So after paying $1 for it (and more for shipping), I tried to put this hard drive into the external case so I can transfer data to it. Um....no. The drive height was too big -- it was 12.5mm high instead of 9.5mm -- so I ran it "topless" (i.e. without the aluminum cover) in the Macally while I transferred data to it from a 5-year-old backup CD. Unfortunately, I didn't back up the registry files when I made the backup CD, so I had to go back to another backup that had them. Then I popped out the drive, put it in the caddy, and put it back in the laptop. It's alive! Total cost: $15.
Next problem: The CMOS battery no longer holds a charge, so I had to run the auto setup every time I power up. I opened the case, pulled out the CMOS battery (a cylindrical battery smaller than a AAA battery), and took it to the local Batteries Plus store. They were out of stock, so they had to special order it. A few days later, it came in. It was a nickel-cadmium AAAA battery, with the original leads glued onto the new battery. Total cost: $4.
The main battery no longer holds a charge either, but I'm not too worried about that. I'm happy to run it on AC power. Plus the price of a replacement is prohibitive. I found one on eBay, but I got outbid at the last minute. C'est la guerre.
I also bought a network card for it, since it's not likely I'll be using the docking station again. When I tried to install the drivers, it asked for the Windows 95 CD-ROM. So I popped the hard drive, took it out of the cradle, mounted it into the Macally, and copied the Win95 cabinet files to the hard drive. Total cost (including shipping): $10.
So now, after spending $25, it's working, even though this new hard drive is starting to show some bad sectors. (Is this common with Toshiba drives? Both this and the last drive were made by Toshiba.) All I need to get is a mouse with a wheel-scroll middle button; The Girl likes the one on my main computer.
The next patient: Tardis Mk II -- a Dell Latitude XPi CD (Intel Pentium 166/MMX processor; 80 Mb memory; 3 Gb hard drive). I picked up some adhesive grip strips from grip-it.com, and found a port replicator from Laptop World, the same place I picked up the Dell over 3 years ago, for $25. I asked one of their techs about getting a larger capacity hard drive, but the largest that it could hold is 8 Gb (I'm guessing it's a BIOS limitation), and they didn't have any in stock.
And when I get time, I'll install a Samsung 16x DVD+/-RW drive in orac, my main machine. (Picked up on sale at Micro Center for $60.)
I love old and cheap computer technology, especially when I can find a use for it and bring it back to life. New technology is good too, especially if it's inexpensive and useful to me. But I'll be more than satisfied with "last year's model", because this year's model soon becomes last year's model.
And it's quite handy when my career is my hobby, or vice versa. As the old saying goes, "if you enjoy what you do, you'll never work a day in your life."
As a diversion from doing my taxes last week, I upgraded my laptop computers. Not wholesale upgrades, mind you. Little pieces-parts upgrades -- memory, hard drives, accessories, etc.
Here's where part of my anticiated refund is going. And no, these purchases are not listed in chronological order.
First off, I wanted a portable external hard drive to back up my laptops. I think buying the case and the drive separately is cheaper than buying an assembled external unit. Plus I can swap out the drive at a later date, and reuse the case.
Knowing the success I've had with the Macally cases, I picked up a Macally PHR-250CC for laptop drives. This case has an aluminum exterior, and the drive can be powered by a USB port. It has its own leatherette slipcover, which should fit easily in a laptop bag. List price is about $50.
I tried fitting my laptop hard drives into the new case, and lo and behold, the drives are too big. The enclosure is designed for drives that are 9.5 mm high. Mine are 12.5 mm high. And so, several days later, I went online to the Dirt Cheap Drives website. I found a nice Hitachi 20 Gb drive for about $75. And it's the right height (9.5 mm). So, for just over $125, I have 20 Gb of portable external storage. Hoo-rah!
And now, I can move on to the first patient: my old laptop, aka "Tardis Mark I" -- an NCR 3180 Safari, which contains an Intel i486/33SL processor; 32 Mb memory; and a dead 2 Gb hard drive. I picked it up second-hand in either '97 or '98 for $600. I souped it up with the larger memory, the larger hard drive, Windows 95, and a CD-ROM in the docking station. (When it was brand new in '93, the asking price was $5000.) When I bought another laptop in '01, I put the NCR in storage. Since I pulled it back out last year, it has become a plaything for The Girl. I thought, "Let's fix it up so it's more usable for her, but I'm not going to spend a lot of money on it."
The first problem: A hard drive transplant. Last year, when I pulled the laptop out of cold storage last year, the hard drive began to fail. It developed bad sectors, which grew like a cancer across the disk. Eventually the entire drive failed. Earlier this month, I found a cheap Toshiba 814 Mb hard drive on eBay, which is tiny by today's hard drive standards, but for a 12-year-old laptop running Windows 95 B, it's ideal. So after paying $1 for it (and more for shipping), I tried to put this hard drive into the external case so I can transfer data to it. Um....no. The drive height was too big -- it was 12.5mm high instead of 9.5mm -- so I ran it "topless" (i.e. without the aluminum cover) in the Macally while I transferred data to it from a 5-year-old backup CD. Unfortunately, I didn't back up the registry files when I made the backup CD, so I had to go back to another backup that had them. Then I popped out the drive, put it in the caddy, and put it back in the laptop. It's alive! Total cost: $15.
Next problem: The CMOS battery no longer holds a charge, so I had to run the auto setup every time I power up. I opened the case, pulled out the CMOS battery (a cylindrical battery smaller than a AAA battery), and took it to the local Batteries Plus store. They were out of stock, so they had to special order it. A few days later, it came in. It was a nickel-cadmium AAAA battery, with the original leads glued onto the new battery. Total cost: $4.
The main battery no longer holds a charge either, but I'm not too worried about that. I'm happy to run it on AC power. Plus the price of a replacement is prohibitive. I found one on eBay, but I got outbid at the last minute. C'est la guerre.
I also bought a network card for it, since it's not likely I'll be using the docking station again. When I tried to install the drivers, it asked for the Windows 95 CD-ROM. So I popped the hard drive, took it out of the cradle, mounted it into the Macally, and copied the Win95 cabinet files to the hard drive. Total cost (including shipping): $10.
So now, after spending $25, it's working, even though this new hard drive is starting to show some bad sectors. (Is this common with Toshiba drives? Both this and the last drive were made by Toshiba.) All I need to get is a mouse with a wheel-scroll middle button; The Girl likes the one on my main computer.
The next patient: Tardis Mk II -- a Dell Latitude XPi CD (Intel Pentium 166/MMX processor; 80 Mb memory; 3 Gb hard drive). I picked up some adhesive grip strips from grip-it.com, and found a port replicator from Laptop World, the same place I picked up the Dell over 3 years ago, for $25. I asked one of their techs about getting a larger capacity hard drive, but the largest that it could hold is 8 Gb (I'm guessing it's a BIOS limitation), and they didn't have any in stock.
And when I get time, I'll install a Samsung 16x DVD+/-RW drive in orac, my main machine. (Picked up on sale at Micro Center for $60.)
I love old and cheap computer technology, especially when I can find a use for it and bring it back to life. New technology is good too, especially if it's inexpensive and useful to me. But I'll be more than satisfied with "last year's model", because this year's model soon becomes last year's model.
And it's quite handy when my career is my hobby, or vice versa. As the old saying goes, "if you enjoy what you do, you'll never work a day in your life."
