by "MM54" (mm54mk2)
Published 11/25/2017 at 22:33
by "MM54" (mm54mk2)
Published 11/25/2017 at 22:33
Tags: computerlopnik
; nibbybait
STARS: 3
My old computer (the oldest one I still have... I miss the IBM...) is now safely back at my house, after spending the past decade in my mother’s basement. Made by Gateway 2000, it is just about top of the line, by 1997's standards. Unfortunately, in the past half of its life spent dormant, the hard drive seems to have failed (so did the CMOS battery).
So now I have a problem. Without the faithful old 8gb Quantum Fireball spinning away (well, it spins for a little, and goes tikitatikitatikita WHACK) what do I do? It turns out 8-16GB IDE hard drives are copiously expensive. I am considering an 8GB IDE “ssd” I found on amazon, shipping from China. There is a well-rated WD IDE drive on newegg, but at 80GB it’s nearly three times as large as this system can handle, and about 20x bigger than I’d ever use.
I do have all the disks that came with the computer in the first place, including the DOS 6.22 floppy and windows installation that I really hope still works. I also have the drivers for the 56k modem but may leave that out. In any case I’m sort of bummed I can’t go through all my old stuff.
What does Oppo think?
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
"Nibby" (nibby68)
11/25/2017 at 22:38, STARS: 4
CF to IDE adapter + 4 or 8GB compact flash card. Rest of specs?
"MM54" (mm54mk2)
11/25/2017 at 22:54, STARS: 1
Ooh I didn’t know they had such a thing. This I will look in to! CF is cheap enough.
Pentium 2 (233MHz), 64MB of memory, I forget the rest. It’s got a CD drive and native support for 5.25" floppies (only a 3.5" drive though, I’d like to rectify that). Some flavor of video card and similar sound card, and a 56k modem. Phoenix BIOS and a now-dead Quantum Fireball 8gb disk. It had a good run, I can’t even imagine the total hours and power cycles on this machine.
"yitznewton" (yitznewton)
11/25/2017 at 23:07, STARS: 1
Ah, I had one of those Gateway towers in college. 233, 32MB RAM, 4GB HDD I think. I killed its Windows install, seemingly with a warez copy of Photoshop. I remember having a hell of a time fixing it because you had to manually install CD drivers from floppy; you couldn’t boot from CD.
"Ash78, voting early and often" (ash78)
11/25/2017 at 23:21, STARS: 0
I had a DX2-66 and I seem to remember you could boot from CD, but you’d have to manually edit this in BIOS during startup. It didn’t automatically look for a CD like later PCs
"MM54" (mm54mk2)
11/26/2017 at 00:42, STARS: 0
Ordered a CF/IDE adapter - according to their shipping estimates it will be here... eventually. Thanks!
Kind of bummed that all my C&C95 and RoadRash saves are gone, though.
"GLiddy" (GLiddy)
11/26/2017 at 00:54, STARS: 1
You might try the freezer trick to try to get your data from the drive. Have backup media ready, put the old drive in a ziplock bag and put it in the freezer for 12 hours. Take out, connect it up and see if you can access your data. It can’t hurt.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
11/26/2017 at 08:20, STARS: 1
alright now take some pictures and clean it up with an air compressor + lightly wipe down the surfaces except for the computer parts.
"Eggplant" (nasu)
11/26/2017 at 10:01, STARS: 1
As a last ditch effort to recover data from your drive, try the freezer trick.
"Eggplant" (nasu)
11/26/2017 at 10:01, STARS: 0
As a last ditch effort to recover data from your drive, try the freezer trick.
"MM54" (mm54mk2)
11/26/2017 at 11:26, STARS: 0
It’s already cleaned up for the most part, case is a touch yellow of course. Had to get the spiders out! I’m about to head out of town for yet another work trip, I’ll try to get some pictures (and more detailed specs) when I get back.
The matching monitor (a massive CRT) is still at my mother’s, there wasn’t room in the car for it with the other stuff. It’s nice but weighs about 50lbs. I hope it still works, I’ll probably grab it over Christmas. I even have the original mouse - the only thing missing is the original keyboard (which was some awful “ergonomic” thing with a split down the middle; see below) and the Boston something-or-other speakers/subwoofer, which might still be somewhere in my family.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
11/26/2017 at 12:03, STARS: 1
brb moving in