Uncreative Labs

Joined: 18 Feb 2012 Posts: 26 Location: Las Vegas NV

As the title expalains, I am in need of two hard drives. I just received an IBM 5161 expansion unit, and when it arrived I found that the previous owner had removed the drives. So now instead of a complete unit, I have a big empty hole. Embarassed

I'm actually hoping to find these in full height form, but I will accept half height as well. In that case though, I will also need some way to fill in the remaining opening.

In a perfect world, the cables will be attached.

Thanks. Hope you hear from some of you soon.

Joined: 18 Feb 2012 Posts: 26 Location: Las Vegas NV

I have been very busy getting things ready for the final assembly of a 5161 expansion unit. I see that there is a user in another forum doing the same as me and looking for hard drives. However, I have been doing much better than he has been doing. All I need to complete mine is a full height MFM drive up to 70 Megs with the faceplate attached.

If someone has one ready to go fairly cheaply, please contact me. I would love to complete the expansion unit soon so it can be attached to the 5150 and configured.

Thanks for reading

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

NViousGK:

FYI, I'm in the process of "cleaning up the mess" in the basement, and came across a few machines with MFM HDD's. I wouldn't guarantee any of them to work, but I do have a working 386 with an MFM controller to test with. So far I recovered a Quantum Q540 (36MB) FH, a Miniscribe M3425 (20MB) HH, and 3 other FH drives (didn't get their specs). Just thought you might still be interested; otherwise, they're going to the great bit-bucket in the sky...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

If he doesn't want them I am willing to recue a few before they get recycled.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Unknown_K:

NViousGK PM'ed me back and stated he didn't need them, so I'll hang on to them. I'm still in the "disassembly" stage of things, but will hang on to any drives that I can salvage. The FH drives are quite heavy (as I'm sure you're aware), so shipping of more than one would be quite expensive...

Just wanted you to be aware of such...

Also have an original PC/XT but haven't been able to determine it's condition. May have many things up for sale before long. Been holding onto stuff way too long and scrap non-ferrous metal prices are pretty good right now. Anything (hardware-wise) that doesn't get sold will meet it's maker before long...already have a 2nd pickup-truck load going in the morning (don't worry, nothing there that was really "salvageable").

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

ok, let me know

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Just a FWIW: Netted $90.35 on 45 MoBo's ($1.50 ea.---all defective), 20 cases (empty and pretty much non-standard), and one large 24-pin Okidata printer (also defective). Since the recyclers are on the way to work, it's like free money...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scrap-buyers-sellers/4873-buying-electronic-precious-metal-scrap.html

http://www.cashforcomputerscrap.com/

This guy pays $3.60 a lb for motherboards (and they weight more then a lb each I would think). You can cram quite a few in a box and ship them parcel post (along with CPU and cards, no need to use any packing it all gets ground up anyway).

Empty cases and other junk is better for the local scrapper.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Actually, I'd just about bet most the ones I had weighed far less than 1 lb. ea. I know I had 3 boxes of boards and I don't think the total weight was 15 lb. Once I stripped the CPU's and on-board RAM (I'm not parting with stuff I can actually use), I'd say about 8 oz. ea.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Its just an option to maximize return on items destined to get recycled. Most of the boards I have on the shelf are older and they seem to weight more then newer ones of the same size (more socketed chips maybe).

Someday I will recycle all of the extra RAM I have never used nor ever will, and I have a few broken motherboards not worth fixing that will get recycled anyway.

I have a bunch of older CPUs but I could never recycle those, they work. And I saved a bunch of HD circuit boards from HDs that were bad, not worth saving up the cases they take up too much room which I don't have.

If you were getting $3 a lb for motherboards thats not too bad at all. What vintage were those boards?

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

What vintage were those boards?

At least 4 were from old TIPC's (286's):
http://www.web8bits.com/Marcas/Texas_Instruments/English/TIPC.html

...which is where the two "known" MFM drives are from. Still have a new color monitor for them. Sadly, they weren't IBM-compatible.

Several others were older IBM PS/2 series machines,

One was a Zenith Data Systems 286 (backplane design):

which I had desperately tried to get working before.

The rest were crapped out 486 to early PI boards.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Crap.. I would have loved a Ti Professional machine, but then you need their specific monitor (loved the look of their keyboards back when I used to get computer magazines in the mail). TIPC were non standard DOS running 8088's not 286.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

TIPC were non standard DOS running 8088's not 286.

These were modified to run 286's (something TI did internally---not offered to the general public). I worked for Siemens for over 12 years---which was formerly a TI facility---and they initially kept some of the machines. The motherboards had been replaced, had 4x256K 30-pin SIMMS, and they did at least try to make a few things somewhat IBM-compatible, but they still needed the TI-specific monitor and keyboard (keyboards were something I didn't have anyway). Even found a 300-1200 baud modem and a speech card in one of them. But as mentioned, I didn't keep anything that wasn't usable in another system.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Well, as it turns out---out of the 5 drives I found, only one of them is salvageable (the Quantum 540). Had to do some significant digging to find out that it's geometry wasn't quite what the spec sheets said (thanks to SpinRite 3.1). Instead of 512 cylinders, it came from the factory as 461 cylinders (heads and sectors/track obviously stayed the same at 8 and 17 respectively). This means it's a ("formatted") 30.5MB MFM drive. Installed MS-DOS 6.22 & I'm currently letting SpinRite run (likely all night) on the 386sx to make sure the drive is "up-to-snuff".

UPDATE (8:30 a.m. 7/15): Only 3 bad blocks according to Spinrite (8k bytes). Not bad for a nearly 30-year old drive...

Also found a link for several old utilities (including the fore-mentioned SpinRite 3.1):

http://ibm-pc.org/oldindex.htm

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Unknown_K:

Need to hear from you if you still want the Quantum 540 drive mentioned above.

T-R-A