24th Mar 2018, 7:22 am | #141 | |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Gloucester, Glos. UK.
Posts: 2,150
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Quote:
|
|
24th Mar 2018, 8:47 am | #142 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: West Cumbria (CA13), UK
Posts: 6,127
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
That would be the Relate 2000. I have some of these, and they theoretically still work, though I have never managed to obtain decent images from them. At least these talk to each other direct over a standard telephone line, so I can use them internally on my PBX - unlike the Amstrad offering, which needed to connect to a service from Amstrad (from which they no doubt raked in a decent sum each time they were used).
As said, though, these have all been rendered obsolete by the likes of Skype.
__________________
Mending is better than Ending (cf Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) |
24th Mar 2018, 9:07 am | #143 |
Heptode
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Ayr, Ayrshire, UK.
Posts: 631
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Another short-lived computer device was the SyQuest SparQ drive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_SparQ_drive 1.0Gb on a removable disc might sound good but having basically a hard disc platter with heads you could see if you peaked inside was never a good idea. This thing was so dire and unreliable it brought the company down. I've still got a couple of drives and some discs but they should probably be in a museum of failed technology. Andy |
25th Mar 2018, 1:59 am | #144 |
Heptode
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 539
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Analogue Satellite boxes!
They were wiped out when Sky went digital. However when Sky vacated the boxes channels, the German's moved in! Taking over the free space left by them. Of course the stations were in German and they rarely used subtitles on English shows. Everything being dubbed into German. But you could watch several music channels, including MTV, which they don't have to pay for, before MTV stopped showing Music Video's. And of course many of the music video's were in English, even the ones made by the German acts! I watched it for several years, till the dish rusted and fell off during a cold spell! I don't know if the Satellite is still transmitting. I guess not. Took me ages to work out what Big Brother was! It hadn't started in the UK at that time. |
25th Mar 2018, 6:49 am | #145 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
Posts: 5,208
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Quote:
1) The data density was a lot lower (perhaps 10MBytes on a 14" diameter platter), so the head flying height was greater. So small particles of dust were less of a problem. [For the pedants, OK the flying height was greater becuase it was the lowest they could use and keep it reliable, which limited the data density -- it was that way round] 2) You had to change the air filter every 6 months or every year (at least). 3) There was other maintenance you did every year too Even then headcrashes were not unheard-of. Sometimes only the disk was damaged, the heads would clean up and could fly again. Often you needed to replace the heads too. [And there is the well-known story of somebody who loads a damaged pack, crashes the heads on the first drive, finds he can't read it, tries it in the next drive, and so on. And then tries a good pack in the first drive (which the heads crash into.. Ends up wiping out a lot of heads and disks...] I still have a number of such drives, spare heads, alignment disks, etc. But I don't run them all the time, and I certainly don't think they are 'archival' |
|
25th Mar 2018, 8:20 am | #146 |
Moderator
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
Posts: 22,875
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Ronco products.
Almost all went to landfill years ago. So any remaining examples are rare and of interest for period displays in museums. David
__________________
Can't afford the volcanic island yet, but the plans for my monorail and the goons' uniforms are done |
25th Mar 2018, 8:46 am | #147 |
Heptode
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 998
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Ronco. Blast from the past.
|
25th Mar 2018, 9:09 am | #148 |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Gloucester, Glos. UK.
Posts: 2,150
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Philips in car Record player .
Sinclair C5 . |
25th Mar 2018, 9:32 am | #149 | |
Heptode
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 656
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Quote:
__________________
Martin BVWS member GQRP Club |
|
25th Mar 2018, 10:25 am | #150 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Wigan, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 9,433
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
CDC and Ampex disc drives, the largest removable drive I worked in would have been the CDC 300MB drives, 10 platters 20 heads including 1 servo head.
We recommend the customer used the pack inspection service that Martin writes about. With proper maintenance head crashes were not that frequent but they did occur. I was fixing these types of drive in the late 1990’s last one I saw would have been 1998. By then it was mainly Seagate SCSI Winchester style drives, no repair on site only replacement. CDC disc drive subsidiary was name changed to Imprimis Technology, Inc. and this was later bought by Seagate Tecnology.
__________________
Frank |
25th Mar 2018, 11:26 am | #151 |
Heptode
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 656
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Hi Frank, I used to do a lot of the CDC 300MB drives, I should have said up to 20 heads. There were smaller 80MB removable drives I used to work on, as well as some with fixed and removable platters. CDC Hawk rings a bell. I finished that job in 1991 I think. Its amazing that a large air conditioned room of these drives, each the size of a washing machine can now fit on a USB stick or SATA drive!
__________________
Martin BVWS member GQRP Club |
25th Mar 2018, 11:53 am | #152 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Wigan, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 9,433
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Hi Martin,
This may bring back a few memories then, it’s a 12Mb download, for any one else this shows how good service manuals can be, there were three to a set, installation and maintenance, logic diagrams and theory of operation, parts list, I think I have them in some sort of order. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/dis...ance_Aug82.pdf This was the 80MB version.
__________________
Frank |
25th Mar 2018, 12:26 pm | #153 |
Heptode
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 656
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Amazing Frank, I've not seen one of these for years, and indeed it does bring back memories! The build quality of mainframe/mini computer and their peripherals was superd, with documentation to match. Mind you when you look back at the prices it's not suprising. When I started working on modular mainframe systems in 1975 the entry level system was £88,000!
__________________
Martin BVWS member GQRP Club |
25th Mar 2018, 2:07 pm | #154 | |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Bristol, UK.
Posts: 136
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Quote:
I do recall one of my customers who failed to screw down the feet on an earlier model (7920, 50 MBytes). The voice coils etc. were sufficiently massive that the drive walked across the floor and pulled its own mains plug out, by which time it was blocking the door. That caused a fair amount of hilarity, I can tell you. |
|
25th Mar 2018, 6:28 pm | #155 |
Heptode
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Duffort, Gers, France
Posts: 714
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
With suitable sequences of disk accesses it was possible to control which way the drive went. I knew someone who in a fit of boredom wrote a program which enabled him to walk the drive around the computer room. One young lady got quite worried when the drive kept following her around.
__________________
Stuart The golden age is always yesterday - Asa Briggs |
26th Mar 2018, 11:33 pm | #156 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK.
Posts: 5,553
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
The owner never took this one found in a rummaging box at the flea market out of its retail box.
|
27th Mar 2018, 10:48 am | #157 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,998
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
I used the little 25+25Mbyte CDC 'Lark' drives extensively in the 1980s: a pair of them were standard fitment on GEC 4000-series minicomputers used as X.25 packet-switches back then.
An interesting design: the drive contained a conventional 25Mb harddrive and a removable 25Mb platter-in-a-blue-plastic-cartridge. The idea being that you could do a bitwise track/sector copy of the hard-drive to the removable, or vice-versa. The drive-electronics supported this natively so you could image the disk without needing any operating-system-specific backup software on the computer itself. Never had any problems with them! Picture of a Lark cartridge here: http://www.mbiusa.com/mbi_000043.htm |
27th Mar 2018, 1:52 pm | #158 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Madrid, Spain / Wirral, UK
Posts: 7,498
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Speaking of drives, almost 20 years ago I picked up what I thought was a CD-ROM drive from a skip. On closer inspection later I discovered it took a sort of cd jewelcase sized caddy. Presumably this was some kind of magneto-optical drive? They can't have been particularly mainstream - never seen anything similar, before or since!
Also useless : old modems and ISDN boxes, surely?
__________________
Regards, Ben. |
27th Mar 2018, 2:46 pm | #159 | |
Heptode
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Duffort, Gers, France
Posts: 714
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
Quote:
__________________
Stuart The golden age is always yesterday - Asa Briggs |
|
27th Mar 2018, 3:46 pm | #160 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Brentwood, Essex, UK.
Posts: 5,339
|
Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.
We had a PC with one of those caddy CD drives at work in the mid 1990's. I was offered it when we upgraded after the millenium, but declined. It is the only one I have seen.
|