My Tower

[Layzie Bone]

After 3 months of building it and modifying it. Here is where it stands:


Pentium 4 Processor 3.0 GHz HTT
800 MHz FSB / 1 MB L2 Cache
1.00 GB DDR 400 Memory
ATI Radeon 9250 Sapphire 128 MB DDR (AGP 8x)
Statitec USB 2.0 (PCI)
Hauppage WinTV SoftPVR +IR TV/FM Tuner (PCI)
Adaptec SATA150 HDD Controller (PCI)

On UltraATA 100 Interface:
2 80 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 8 MB cache

On SATA 150 Interface:
80 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 8 MB cache

Optical Drives:

ATA33 | Liteon DVD ROM 16x (48x CD)
ATA33 | LG CD-RW 52/32/52x
USB2.0| Liteon DVD+RW/-RW Dual Layer


Here's a summary

Burns CD's and DVD's
240 GB total storage
1 GB memory
Tv Tuner with FM
128 MB Video


Some Cool Items
80 mm case fam
PCI cooler fan
3x HDD cooler fans
Cold Cathode Tube (blue)

[nesman]

My tower:
cpu: 466 MHz
RAM: 128 MB (and it's probably the slow stuff)

hd: one 30GB drive (mobo can only handle 32GB per drive)
optical: 1 DVD reader

[Layzie Bone]

My other computer that I bought at a yard sale for $25 has:

Intel Pentium Processor [Clock at 75 MHz]
23 MB RAM
850 MB Hard Disk Drive
16 bit Sound Card (You ought to see the size of the thing, it HUGE!)
Quad Speed CD-ROM
LinkSys Fast Ethernet 10/100 card (I added)
On Bard Video with 1 MB VRAM
Supports PS/2
Supports IEE1294 (that is a parallel port )

with that "powerful" technology it is topped off with, you guessed it, Windows 95 a true 32-bit Operating System.

[nesman]

I've got a few machines sitting around with similar stats.
We got a laptop for about $25 from a friend running 70 MHz and something like 40MB of memory. It boots up fast as hell, though. I was surprised to find that it was able to play most of the videos I threw at it, as long as it had recent codecs. I wouldn't have thought it'd be able to play video with such old hardware. Used to play a lot of "Chip's Challenge" on it, too.

I'm having a hard time getting them running, as they don't seem to have options to boot from cd, and I'm not sure they can read cd-r. One of them has a cool hole in the front that I'm not sure how to use. Once we replace my camera, I'll try to get a pic of it. It almost looks like a side loading cassette player.

[Layzie Bone]

yeah back before BIOS was able to boot from there. If they're windows machines all I can say is try typing in win a few times.


That thing? the little cassette thingie, sounds like it could indeed be a tape drive, I've never seen one on a "modern" computer, actually I take that back, I have, and that was on a microcasette tape, no idea on it's data capacity. On really old computers there were some weirdo computers that did use cassette tapes, and those just look like a cassette player, without getting to close you wouldn't be able to tell.

Other thing that it could be, some type of cartridge, like how on new laptops you got those things on the side to plug in wireless lan cards and such. Outside of that it could be a ZIP drive.

[Grinch]

I have a server with a tape drive that takes cassette looking things. It looks like a floppy drive and each tape will hold about 40GB of data and you can get them bigger.

[Layzie Bone]

i dont think thats what he has.

Must be quite of few different devices...

[threewing]

I find the caziest stuff in the garbage from offices. Tapes that look like laptops and store 200 MB livetti and such. Printer cartridges... Like, How many figgin printer brands do exist in this world? Amazing what people throw away though...
I found a nice memory that I gave to a nerd / friend, still in the hard protective sheet it was wearing in the store... I figured: If no truck has driven over this yet, and no schmuck ever unpacked it, it still is good. Turned out, It is good. Computer-man happy... I happy
Can't just walk away with two discarded server-towers though Ripping off garbage could get me fired

[Rat]

Here's an idea... put up a poster wherever folks go to relax... coffee room, parking areas, whatever. Suggest that instead of dumping hardware in the trash, they consider giving it to you. You could even approach your bosses for official permission for that.

Grinch... I took one of those tape streamers out of one of our servers just yesterday (God knows why we have IT bods here). My boss decided it wouldn't be needed anymore because the machine won't be used as a server in future. Want another streamer?

Wanabe, you could be right about the zip drive.... or a jazz drive, or some other older kind of high capacity removable storage. Nes... does the thing look like my picture here? This is my external zip drive, I still use it sometimes so it stays connected. The internal ones tend to be 'computer' coloured. The thing on top of the zip drive is a crappy USB dsl modem, and on top of that is an actual 100 MB zip disk (which has been reformatted to 320 MB).

[nesman]

Nope, not a zip drive. I tried jamming a audio cassette into it, but the hole isn't nearly deep enough (about 2cm deep). It's also a bit taller and wider than a cassette. I'll take it apart sooner or later and google some part numbers, if I can find them.

[Layzie Bone]

but it is definately a tape drive, and describe the computer, like does it run windows 95 or newer, if it is older, things get complicated, because back in the 80's computer companies had thier own thing, their own drives, systems, programs, languages, etc, you get the idea.

I wouldn't mind having an 8" floppy drive that connects on like serial or parallel or even USB, not so much that it is so great, but just to say that I have one on my computer. Same with having a ZIP drive, don't need one, but I want one. Also wouldn't mind getting another board that has more PCI slots so I can add IEE1394, those memory card readers, a 5 1/4 floppy drive, tape drive, and maybe a few other things.

The 8" floppy drive would sit nicely on top of my VCR...

[Rat]

It's easy enough to get a zip drive. http://www.iomega.com
They're still made, though they're nearly all USB based now.

[nesman]

I've got pictures of the tape(?) drive now.

Looking at the third picture, I think it is meant to take a magnetic tape. That looks like a tape head to me. It seems to be some kind of 'head first' loader, like an 8 track.

I'll have some part numbers to google on in a while, then I'll know more about it. I'll also try to arrange all my boxen close enough for a group photo.


Edit: What I have is a Jumbo 1400 with a max capacity of 1.3GB (with compression) or 680MB (without compression). It's kind of impressive, since this one was made 9/12/95. It looks like it would take about an hour to fill this sucker for a backup.

Mine was sharing a ribbon with the floppy drive, so I don't think the compression option was available. I think I'll keep this drive, just in case I ever come up with a tape to read.