mussing over some last upgrades

[pqwabbit]

ok all thats left for me is to wait on having my parts delivered - but I'm wanering hmm should I also get a bigger hd and upgrade the cd rom? (I have a 2.1 gig/ 10x I am planning ot transfer to the new machine) at least then whenI sell the old one I can sell it relatively complete (minus the memory) and get more money for it - I mean I'll need a bigger hd soon as it is - hmmmmm
any thoughts? I'd love to replace the cd with a cd-rw or a dvd but they're still a bit outta my price range - and anyways when the prices come down enough I can always add em - I have a ton of empty slots inthe new case and plenty of room onthe mb.

hmmmmmm any thoughts?
Lea

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Bunnies make life better.
Massachusetts House Rabbit Society, Inc.
http://www.MAHouseRabbit.org/

[Del]

Hi Lea

I personally would ditch the 10x cdrom, but that's just my feelings. My box had a 12x in it when I got it, I swapped it for a 24x and things go alot smoother off the CD now. I want a cd-rw so bad I can taste it, but I think I'll spring for a cable modem first *grin*

As for the HDD, if your goal is to sell the old one (mostly) intact, and you want to spend the money on a new HDD, go for it. So far what we've done is just add new, bigger drive to the existing one (the Sony has a full 2.1Gb and a 6.4Gb that only has Diablo on it). The only reason we did that is to avoid losing two years worth of garbage already saved on the 2.1. Also, if you're close to filling up the 2.1 (say within 250-500Mb of the end), you might as well go for the bigger one now as it could save hassles and potentially lost stuff later down the road.

Or something

Del

[pqwabbit]

yeh man well - as per my earlier post months ago - the hdd is like kinda crowded - adn I was just going to ad anotehr but onthe other hand it would be nice to be able to sell the old machine relatively complete and yeh that 10x cd is really starting to bug me (but not near as much as the processor speed - or lack there of) I also plan to sell my paralel zip and install an internal one - cuz I just have too much crap connected thru the paralell port as it is (3 devices!) and the cordage associated with all these devices is obscene - never mind the desk top space.

for now I do plan toi install t=my current hdd in the new machine and when I replace it I can just transfer all the crap o er to the new one and pull the old one and stick it back where it came from -

shoulldI sell my old machine in parts or relatviely complete? what do ya think will get me the most bang for the buck?
any thoughts?

Lea

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Bunnies make life better.
Massachusetts House Rabbit Society, Inc.
http://www.MAHouseRabbit.org/

[Dean B]

Personally I'd say put all the bits together and sell them off as one complete PC. I have a box of 'old' PC parts from different machines and upgrades and it breaks my heart when I think what I paid for them and what the're actually worth now.
If you're looking for a new HD then the new IBM EIDE Titan is faster than most SCSI's and has 25GB capacity. Should solve your space problems for a while ..

Dean.
--- Bunnies make better sandwiches ---

[pqwabbit]

ooooooooo!! just scored a 40X for $20 -
well that takes care of that.
http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif
Lea

------------------
Bunnies make life better.
Massachusetts House Rabbit Society, Inc.
http://www.MAHouseRabbit.org/

[Justin]

I'm planning to upgrade my HDD to a 11.9 gig Maxtor drive - personally I'd only use IBM or Maxtor as far as IDE goes http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif A word of advice though: If you can do with one single drive, do it. Right now (I know it's pathetic) I'm using a 1.2 gig Seagate and a 400 meg Seagate. It sucks bad...

The 400 meg spins itself down after about 10 seconds of non-use, and there is no way to control this (it's a hardware thing, not software). So every time I open up explorer or use the open dialog in a program it takes about 8 seconds for it to spin back up - even if I'm not using the drive (all this just to extract the volume label for display). That's also why I never keep a CD in the drive (an 8x - very very pathetic lol).

Anyway, just wanted to get that out. The Maxtor 11.9 gig I'm looking at was priced at like $250 a couple months ago, so it's probably a little cheaper now (hopefully - but I need it anyway).

Del - I have a few boxes of computer stuff - EGA cards, a 12 meg hard drive that takes 2 5/14" bays, a couple CGA monitors, power supplies, floppies, 2 2400 baud modems and 2 33.6 modems, 2 sound blaster 16's, etc etc - most bought new only a few short years ago (well, except for the XT hard drive from the 8088 http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif)

Justin
- Bunnys are only good if chocolate -

[Del]

Justin,

I'm still pretty light on excess hardware lying around. Got a 12x cdrom, two 28.8 modems (one in a box, one just lying on the floor. I really should put it in a box...), some funky video card, some funky sound card, some funky speakers (each requires 4 AA batteries, bleah), an 80Mb hard drive (not sure of maker), a Western Digital 512Mb hard drive, and a NoName 386 sitting in the closet (it has 9.5Mb RAM, 5.25 and 3.5 floppies, no HDD)(The RAM originally was on eight .25Mb chips hehehe, tossed two in favor of two 4Mb)

Del
--Am I just paranoid--

[flowersource]

Justin,
I had to buy a new hard drive at 7:30 PM one night last week when my 6 month old Western Digital 4.1 bit the dust (no symptoms, just died in it's sleep). WD is mailing me a replacement.

I got a Maxtor 10.1 for $179 at Best Buy. No rebate BS. I made a minor mistake on install, I used the disk that came with it...not a good thing, took a few minutes to get that program out (not compatible with Partition-It)

Real men don't need instructions http://www.aota.net/ubb/biggrin.gif

Mike

[Justin]

I will NEVER buy a Western Digital drive! A friend of mine has a 3.1 gig WD Caviar (a popular series of WD drives) - the Caviar series has a common problem where the head somehow gets lodged somewhere it's not supposed to - can happen after 10 years of use or the day it was bought. It's just some kind of design flaw. And guess what? They've been making the Caviar for years and haven't changed the design.

The same friend with the 3.1 also had a 212 meg Caviar and it did just that - and of course lost everything on it. Now once in a while the drive will kinda sit there with the light on, halting the whole system, and he remedies it by smacking the computer (it works, although I always advise against it http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif)

Anyway, it's a known issue with WD drives but they still haven't changed it. I used to think they were the best like years ago, but when they know about a problem and it obviously doesn't cost them a whole lot, they just kinda leave it there http://www.aota.net/ubb/frown.gif

Maxtor for $179 at BB???? I will definately shop around... I saw the 11.9 gigger at a local place that usually has better prices than BB, CC, and the other large stores, but maybe not...

Oh, when I mentioned my parts boxes, I didn't mention the 486 and 2 386's, both complete (only one spare monitor though, no hard drives) - all of which I will probably have to get rid of soon (moving). Oh, I also have (in parts) a PS2 - it's utterly useless though, as it's a 386 and doesn't have ISA slots... it's IBM's own way (back when they tried to reinvent the wheel - again).

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[flowersource]

Justin,
You just described the problem with my Western Digital HDD. It sounded like it was grinding sausage, but was doing nothing. I tried banging on it, but it just screamed louder.

My brother and my son have also had to return WD caviar HDDs within the past 90 days.

Guess we will do Maxtor for a while. The Price was right, I paid $179 for the Maxtor 10.1gig (the 8gig WD next to it on the shelf was $199)They are probably cheaper elsewhere, I did not shop around. I just ran down and bought it when mine went south.

Mike

[pqwabbit]

well some of them old parts aint too pathetic - well too us they is but to peoel jusat getting started or just need the basics - oit works http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif I've been mussing on and off about soliciting for old/use donated puyter parts - throwing some machines togetehr and seeling them to make a bit of cash for House Rabbit Society - man some of the ads I've seen for ancient machines are obscene - I'd never pay $200 for an old 486 - but people are acutally selling themlike that - yeeesh! right now I got some useless parts of a 386 except well the case and the floppy and power supply an the inernal speaker. The mb simm slots a piece was cheesy platic and broke off so it wont hold the simms in and anyways there's only 2 I cant imagin that supports enough memory to run anything anymore. I also have a 60 mg hdd an unidentified game card and one of them add on cache cards by kingston, but have no idea just how much cache is on it - and anywasy it's 11 years old - I picked the machine up out of the trash - figure at very least I have a free usable case, power supply and floppy out ofthe deal. When I ran the thing it acutally tried to boot up win 95!! HA! what fool attempted to install that ona 60 mg disk with 8 megs ram yeeesh! DOH!

Lea


------------------
Bunnies make life better.
Massachusetts House Rabbit Society, Inc.
http://www.MAHouseRabbit.org/

[Del]

The 386 I've got was $50, with a 13" monitor (it works tho), about 80Mb drive (bleah), 2Mb RAM (yikes), running Win3.1 (bleah!). Still using the monitor, but the rest is carefully hidden from view of anyone who might see it and know what it is and ridicule me for having a 386.

Oh yeah, we were cleaning out the spare room at Mom's house the other day and ran across the old Atari 7800 (grin). She was going to give it to charity, but I talked her out of it. Dig-Dug and Q-Bert still work fine too!

Del

[Justin]

The thing about donating old computers is that nobody ever seems to want them. My dad works at a local Boys club, and people donate old 386's and Macs all the time. They either throw them away or throw them my way http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif That's where I got most of the junk one's I have http://www.aota.net/ubb/biggrin.gif My mom works at a library and it's the same story there too.

I still have my Commodore Vic-20 (yes, older than the C-64) that I got in 1982 when I was 7 years old http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif Still works if you hook it up to the TV.

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Armand]

Ahhh...the good ole' days... I remember when I had to switch between cartridge games and a plug for a hard drive on my old TRS-80. Scary in comparison these days huh?

[Tom]

You bunch of youngsters![nbsp][nbsp]I was writing BASIC & FORTRAN in 1977 on a Cromemco System III.[nbsp][nbsp]It had huge floppies the size of a dinner plate and I think we bumped it up to 64K of RAM for major bucks.[nbsp][nbsp]The case was about the size of a microwave oven.

I'm talking <font color=#FF0000>years</font> before Apple, Commodore, Trash-80, Coleco, Timex-Sinclair or even IBM came along with personal computers.

Came in handy in '79 when I began programming FORTRAN on a mainframe - using punch cards.[nbsp][nbsp]Anybody else used paper punch cards to program (no monitor)?

Later on ('81 or '82), I bought an original model 5150 64K IBM PC and still have the receipt from Computerland at my office.[nbsp][nbsp]The price I paid would make you cry - like $75 for a printer cable, adding up to $5 grand for a dual floppy monochrome system.

Nyah nyah! ;)
[This message has been edited by Tom (edited 04-30-99)]