Today, my latest purchase, a toshiba t1000xe laptop, arrived. The device is in good shape, but the Conner harddisk drive is not!
Something is leaking from it - and it's not data 🫠I just learned, this is the (now liquified) sealing between the upper and lower part of the disk.. a common problem with those drives.
Those were the days when we put these lamps into our computers. I've had this pair lying around for years and it still works, great!
ps: I bought a Korad bench-powersupply 😎
#retrocomputing #electronics
This SSD in the front died during resilvering today, as I was upgrading my #proxmox server (zfs-array) with 4 new SSDs.
The old ones are at least 10 years old and maybe from the same batch, so there were chances of duplicate fail. Luckily this didn't happen and there are backups, of course!
I read about failing disks in long used nas-drives during the resilvering process, but it never happened with my equipment.
Just arrived from Texas - Papertape!
The rolls are complete and undamaged, but unfortunately I don't know what they were used for or what is stored on them.
Nevertheless it's a certain satisfaction to see the individual bits.
"eBay International Shipping" is a rabbithole 🤠 🙂↕️
No collection is complete without a core memory module. In my case from a Saratov-2 computer manufactured in the USSR.
The individual rings are smaller than the head of a pin, amazing!
As soon as I have a macro lens for my camera, I will take new photos. Additionally I'll add something for scale...
For more information:
https://rusue.com/cemetery-of-soviet-computers/
https://www.curiousmarc.com/computing/core-memory
The building did not stand out. Unremarkable industrial building, which was built in hundreds of Soviet cities. Non-broken glass, burning lights, live plants inside, modern plastic entrance doors. Except for one floor. Despite the twilight, the floor remained lifelessly dark. Somewhere in the depths, there was a dim glow of electric light, hardly penetrating through...
They have finally arrived: 4-inch wafers from the 1980s (the one in the middle is from rockwell).
So my boring computer chatter becomes a more tangible experience 😄
I found this website very useful (scroll down to "Null modem cable variant 2: Full Handshaking" or check the screenshot attached in this toot/post):
https://www.delock.com/infothek/Nullmodemkabel_RS-232/nullmodemkabel_e.html
And this is the cable I used (the pinouts are described in the details):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B006TC3EWO?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title&th=1