Sometimes I have to wonder how retired/defunct hard drive manufacturers would stack up today if their luck had been better years ago. I'm sure most of you remember when Miniscribe's drives were some of the best selling hard drives on the market. I wonder where they would be today if they hadn't shot themselves in the foot. And others who have gone out of the business or sold out: Tandon, NEC, Mitsubishi, et cetera.
You don't have to tell me I'm mentally unstable, I already knew that.
I remember our very first computer (I was practicly a baby!) was a Leading Edge 4.77mhz IBM clone. It was a cute, efficient little machine, and the sounds it made were unmistakable. I used to sit on mom's lap while she played (or worked), and when she turned it on she would always tell me to listen for the train. "Honk-hooooooooooooooooooonk-Beep!" Yup, it was a Miniscribe. I also remember when we replaced that drive after we started getting errors, and upgraded to a Mitsubishi MR535. 60 megabytes! Wow, we thought we were set for life and then some. I liked to plug in the Miniscribe now and then to listen to the sounds, but one day I accidentally dropped it on a concrete floor, and that was the end of that. Anyway, the Mitsubishi lasted until the computer outlived it's usefulness, then gave out not too long after it was declared a game computer. That seems like ages ago. Not too long ago, I got the urge to restore our two Leading Edge computers, and, of course, the first drives I found on eBay were Seagate ST-225s. Eventually, though, I found a Miniscribe 3438, which I was certain (based on my "research") was the original drive in our first computer. When I plugged it in I nearly had flashbacks (good ones)! And to think, it still works. I also found a Miniscribe 8438, which was the original drive in our main business computer (this drive survived intact until about a year ago when I killed it trying to get the information off of it). The cool thing about the 8438/8425 drives is that they can be taken apart and the platters flipped or replaced, or the "interrupter" can be turned to place track 0 in a different spot, thereby often reviving the drive after it has long been dead.
Yeah I know someone's gonna shoot me if I keep spewing all this insanity. lol. but I like being nostalgic about computers.
You don't have to tell me I'm mentally unstable, I already knew that.
I remember our very first computer (I was practicly a baby!) was a Leading Edge 4.77mhz IBM clone. It was a cute, efficient little machine, and the sounds it made were unmistakable. I used to sit on mom's lap while she played (or worked), and when she turned it on she would always tell me to listen for the train. "Honk-hooooooooooooooooooonk-Beep!" Yup, it was a Miniscribe. I also remember when we replaced that drive after we started getting errors, and upgraded to a Mitsubishi MR535. 60 megabytes! Wow, we thought we were set for life and then some. I liked to plug in the Miniscribe now and then to listen to the sounds, but one day I accidentally dropped it on a concrete floor, and that was the end of that. Anyway, the Mitsubishi lasted until the computer outlived it's usefulness, then gave out not too long after it was declared a game computer. That seems like ages ago. Not too long ago, I got the urge to restore our two Leading Edge computers, and, of course, the first drives I found on eBay were Seagate ST-225s. Eventually, though, I found a Miniscribe 3438, which I was certain (based on my "research") was the original drive in our first computer. When I plugged it in I nearly had flashbacks (good ones)! And to think, it still works. I also found a Miniscribe 8438, which was the original drive in our main business computer (this drive survived intact until about a year ago when I killed it trying to get the information off of it). The cool thing about the 8438/8425 drives is that they can be taken apart and the platters flipped or replaced, or the "interrupter" can be turned to place track 0 in a different spot, thereby often reviving the drive after it has long been dead.
Yeah I know someone's gonna shoot me if I keep spewing all this insanity. lol. but I like being nostalgic about computers.
