Remember when 80MB was a lot of space?
 

Cause I do, and I'm only 23. Just got these in from Newegg.com, 74.99ea shipped with the docking stations.

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7893/dsc00263dr.jpg

That brings my grand total between 3 systems to:
36GB Raptor Drive
80GB
160GB
160GB
250GB
250GB
500GB
500GB
1TB
1TB
1TB
1TB

Sighhhhhh

Remember when a 256mb flash drive was like $120...now you can't even find them that small.

Wow thats a good price. At the college I went to they had a HD that was less then 80MB, and it was bigger then a brick!

Nice, Im rocking roughly 2 tb shared on the network for my media and 2 drives making up about 500g in the main rig for games and misc.

Soon ill be buying 4 of the fastest 300g drives i can afford for a hotswap raid setup, with a 80g ssd for win7 for extra fast boot.

I know right, and now they have like 16GB for 30 bucks or something. I think the largest thumb drive I've seen is 128GB.

Here's a 256GB thumb drive. You can have one too if you have $1,108.

Kingston's 256GB USB Flash Drive is $1,108 - Tom's Hardware

Didnt someone release a 400+g but the price tag was pretty large. Cant remember who made it because i thought it was useless. My wd passport 160g that i keep with my laptop handles everything i ever throw at it.

I still have a 3.4 gig hdd under my bed thats HUGE from many years ago.

I have a 12GB HDD that is sitting in a non-functional computer. That is the smallest I own.

I'm digging the docking stations. Going to research those now.

Heh...

When I was in college at UF (mid 90s) they still kept a pair of VAX 11/780 computers up and running in the dinosaur pen. Truthfully, they were my favorite machines in some ways. Through the steel-impregnated windows, you could see the row of RA81 disk cabinets proudly set in front of the computers. A dozen or so of these, set side by side:

http://archive.computerhistory.org/r...tos/ra81-2.jpg

Each one of those cabinets contains three RA81 disk drives. Each drive held 456MB on seven surfaces (plus one servo surface), using 14" platters. About half of the cabinets actually had RA60s in the top slot, which was a 205MB drive that used removable cake packs. If you wanted a new disk pack loaded, you had to call up the data center on the phone (or visit in person) and schedule a disk change, which sometimes had a waiting list days long if the astrophysics guys were scrambling against some deadline.

Fun stuff...



Deep-tech edit: I found the service manual for the RA60! http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/disc/ra...-001_May83.pdf

Ive been tempted to get one of the docks but id rather it be a ide interface vs sata so i can use it to play with old drives, the case i will be upgrading to soon has 4 hotswap raid bays built into the front. If anyone wants to blow there mind on one of the most badass pc cases ever check this out.

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D ATX Chassis Review - The Obsidian 800D Case - Legit Reviews

I must admit this is pretty sexy:

http://www.legitreviews.com/images/r...n_cooling2.jpg

As i read over the specs to the case i repeatedly would say "NO WAY" out loud due to shear amazement that they thought of everything! I can't wait to be the proud owner of one of those bad boys.

My first computer with a hard drive was a 10mb Miniscribe. It was MFM, used it for a couple of years with an RLL interface, which I think gave me close to 20mb. It took 2 5 1/4" bays, back in the day we called that full height. It never did fail, could still be running to this day. I donated it to a geek who ran a local BBS setup when I upgraded.

Now, not as archaic as Mr Perez's example but I did own it and kept porn on it at one point. I could show some pictures of some punch cards we have lying around work ;)

I remember when we upgraded out first PC from 8 to 16 megs.
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i remember doing 4 to 8 so i could play doom without a boot disk. cost me $200 at a show

Mmmmm. Cards.

One thing which I really thought was hilarious about the VAXen related to the way that storage quotas were handled. An individual student account was alloted a certain amount of disk storage, which in practical terms was equivalent to somewhat under a megabyte. (The VMS filesystem used different units of measure from what we're accustomed to today.)

By comparison, the rather arcane regulations for the machine stated that an account belonging to an officially sanctioned student organization was permitted a considerably greater amount of disk quota. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was a lot.

As a result of this, there was in fact an official student organization called VAX Unlimited (aka VAXu) whose sole purpose for existing was to get that extra disk quota to be shared among its members. Meetings of the organization were, shall we say, fairly random and mostly involved going out for Chinese food. The collection of dues consisted of forcefully throwing whatever loose change you happened to have in your pocket at the treasurer, in a game that somewhat resembled dodgeball, only with a much greater risk of losing an eye (or at least, scratching an eyeglass lens.)

I just did some googling, and much to my amazement, our old web page is still up! (well, most of it anyway) VaxU - About VaxU

I honestly don't know what ultimately happened to the club. The machines were finally turned off about the same time I graduated, though I wouldn't be surprised if they continued calling meetings to disorder long after that.

How far are we going back?
http://www.trs-80.com/covers/hwcover-ccr-82tape(rs).jpg
:giggle:

I have the non green versions, which are a little faster, and mine are only 640gb each (x2), plus a 500GB, but I have a nice WD 1TB external I use for backup. I guess that makes my one machine plus external total only about ~3TB. The days of 60GB and 80GB standard wasn't even that long ago. I have a receipt from Newegg for an 80GB ATA100 WD Blue from '06 for $51 :giggle:

I'm ready for SSD to drop in price. I need a fast SSD with decent capacity, but I'm not willing to spend so much.

I just put one of these in my new machine as the boot volume, with a standard 500GB drive as the data volume.

It's fast.

< holding out for a nice sata3 80+gig to run the os on.

God i wish i was baller enough to buy one for my favorite fps's files.

My 10krpm raptor drive pretty much loads most games instantly. I love being the host on CODMW2 and loading the game about 10 seconds faster than everyone else, so I get about a 5 second head start, lot's of multikills on people trying to cap the first flag.

Also apparently sooooooome of you old men remember when things less than 80MB was a lot of space lol

I've been eyeballing the 80GB version for $220. I might just pick one up when I get Windows 7 in a month or two. 40GB would be just a little small for me. I'd also like Sata 3.0, so I may hold off until I build another machine. Just finished this one about 9 months ago, so I'm sure a new build will only be a year down the road. By then SSD should be a fair bit cheaper for more volume. Damn standards keep changing too often. Seems like Sata 2.0 was just the big thing a few days ago... same for PCI-e 3.0... I JUST GOT A 2.0 COMPATIBLE MOBO DAMN IT!

Ive been doing a few upgrades to the main rig, planning on eventually using current parts plus 4 new hdd's to build a more than capable server after the upgrade is complete.

Cool, I owned that or a similar unit. Was plugged into my TRS-80 Model 4. Which had 2 5 1/4" floppy disks too.

The height of cool with my Model 4 was getting Zaxxon to play on it. Then it ate the disk and that was the end of that. I connected my first 300baud modem to that bad boy too.

It's killing me having slightly outdated hardware. I think I'm going to wait though. I want a 5870 GPU so bad I can't stand it, but I'm thinking with PCI-e 3.0 in the middle of this year the manufacturers will rush to design another new flagship GPU to support the new standard. I also can't stand that when I built my machine DDR3 was still costly and lower speeds than are standard today. My CPU is nearly AMD top of the line, but was outdated by the 955 and recently the 965 AM3. Only thing I will be reusing will be the PSU (860W PC Power & Cooling, bad ass unit), DVD drive and HDD's. Here comes another $1000 I don't need to spend.

I'm anxiously awaiting 10+TB hard drives in the 100-150$ range.. hopefully not too far off.

I would imagine those drives taking a bit of time for read/write ... especially if non partitioned. lol I may be wrong but i just cant see a drive be cheap and realistically be able to read/write with decent speeds on a disk that crammed with info.

Its raid for my future.. Im thinking 4 x 1tb drives with decent speeds. More than even my server will probably ever use.

In the $150 range, probably 6 years. Actually no, forget that. I don't think 10TB will happen and be affordable with platter drives. If it does, it will be a bit longer than 6 years. Not even sure when SSD will show up with larger volumes in a realistic price. 512GB SSD's are still like ~$1500-$2000. But shit, 800MB/s read and write would be INSANE!

I meant to ask, how do you like those Rosewill docking stations? How is the transfer speed? I've been thinking about one. They are hot swappable aren't they? I wish I had an easier option for old PATA standards. I have an adapter but it only works when it wants to, which is not very often. I have 4 or 5 old non SATA drives I'd like to be able to get data from and maybe even use for super duper redundant storage, since I already have 3 layers of backup.

I cut my teeth on computers using punch cards and tape. Haven't seen any punch tape for about 25 years.

They are surprisingly fast. Mine are the Blue models, and slightly smaller volume, but the 1TB Green drives are quick. Not going to see Raptor speeds out of it, since it's only a 7200, but for typical use, it's enough for 90% of people.

You're age is showing... :giggle:

Ah you kids...

First computer I bought had 1K of RAM and 4K or ROM.

I give you the Sinclair ZX-80...
http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pictur...0_SDIM0759.jpg

Still have it in a box somewhere, fully "functional".

As for big computers I spent the first 11 yrs of my work career in IT working with mainframe systems, first one of those I used (a Honeywell 2200) used a teletype to communicate with you, though it was a dinosaur even then (~1980).

What, 10TB drives?

Assuming that platter count and spindle speed remain the same, and a 5x increase in areal density is achieved, then I'd think the performance of the drive would be roughly identical to a modern unit for random reads, and somewhat faster for sequential reads.

With a servo head motor, a seek halfway across the disk should take the same amount of time, regardless of whether it's passing over 10,000 cylinders or 50,000. (Assuming the physical size of the disk to be a constant- I don't see the 3.5" form factor going anywhere for a while.)

For a bona-fide sequential read or write, throughput should improve as sectors are now passing under the head at 2.5x the rate at which they would on a 2TB drive (assuming that the increase in areal density is evenly distributed in both axis.)

I can't imagine how partitioning would have any effect whatsoever.


Never actually got to use cards or paper tape during their heyday. Closest I can claim is that the Marston library at UF still had a punch card in a pocket inside the cover of every book on their shelves, though even those were being phased out in favor barcodes when I got there.

First storage medium I used was cassette, followed by 8" and 5.25" floppy. I may still have my "double sided hole punch" somewhere...

I've been transferring at about a gig per minute. Not super fast, but acceptable. I'm moving 800gb worth of HD stuff onto one of them and it's going fast.

Newegg had mixed reviews, lots of supposed DOA. I have two and both work flawlessly. The power cable where you plug it in is pretty long (1"x2.5") so it takes up a lot of space on the power strip if the outlets face the wrong way.

They seem solid and based solely on my experience I would recommend them.

Plug on the base feel solid? That is what always worried me the most, plug in the cable for the first time (assuming the cable is removable from the base) and have the socket push in and fail. I guess those speeds are acceptable. I typically only transfer 250-300GB at a time, and it's not too often. I might pick one up.

I feel bad for not posting the deal up when they had it on newegg, :facepalm: .

With a standard HD size it's pretty hard to eff up the pins for the sata. Power and the USB is detachable from the base station. There is a cover that flips up or down that keeps dust/foreign objects from getting in when not in use. Feels quality to me.

You should feel bad! BAD!

I sold my 16K Heathkit H89 a few years back on Ebay for $700. Horrible investment (I think I paid $1500 for it). I guess I should have bought some MSFT instead <G> (would have probably been worth MILLIONS of $$$ by now).


http://oldcomputers.net/pics/h89-left.jpg


I can remember getting my first 300 baud modem. Was a shame because there was no one to call. I did the old war dialer thing just trying to connect with anyone. Was pretty interesting what you could get into back then.


http://www.our-picks.com/wp-content/...firstapple.gif

I miss the original floppy disks that you could frisbee like 50 meters

Ah Heathkit.. never built any of their computers, but I did buy an RCA oscilloscope kit from them and build it. I don't imagine they're still around...

When I was in college we used 300 baud modems to compile COBOL... our PrimeOS mini didn't have a COBOL compiler so we used the "SuperWylber" at WSU.

My father worked for NCR and the disc packs (metal platters stacked up inside plastic cases - imagine a huge HD with 14" platters) would sometimes "crash" when the read heads would slam into the platters. The crashed discs were thrown away and later recovered by me. Imagine a 14" metal frisbee with sharp edges. Lots of fun...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...a_diskpack.jpg

Ahhh 5.25 floppies. Joe and I are similar aged. He may be a couple years older. My first jobs were with SGI computers and I was a 3-D Modeler for real time flight simulation. I'm a long way from that now.... I plant seeds in the ground and harvest them in the fall.

Kind of went the other way there didn't ya? I will soon start a career in the computer world soon (officially anyway) but I also do some planting and selling on the side in the summer. The highest and lowest (in a sense) of technology. Nice to be on both ends of the spectrum, purely man made, and nature.

Yea I started a family and moved back home. Really screwed up the career. :bowrofl:

I still have a contact at Flight Safety in STL and he says they would hire me anytime. I work a LOT, but it is a family based business and pays the bills. 4500 acres of row crop and 300 head of cattle.

We have a shelf here at work in the public area that still has a few boxes of Maxell 5 1/4. We have punch cards and the like in a display. I just tossed a box from the bottom shelf of my desk last month when I was cleaning shit out.

The 5 1/4s are there simply because everyone is too lazy to clean the shelf, not because they're being "displayed" for historical purposes.

What's worse than the old media is the fact that we still use some Fortran software that is 20+ years old. It's math heavy geodesy stuff that nobody has the time or desire to rewrite. It does some coordinate conversions and is only used once in a blue moon.

Frank