Harddisk blues and questions about solutions...

[Michael Robinson]

On Saturday 29 March 2003 07:37 pm, you wrote:
> One possible solution would be to find another 10-gig or so hard
> drive.
>
> I know a couple of vendors offhand that *might* have such an item in
> stock: http://www.compgeeks.com/ or http://www.dirtcheapdrives.com/
>
> Good luck :)

Thanks, nothing there though that makes an ideal replacement.  Maybe 
someone else carries ATA33/66 drives.  I looked at serial ATA but it was 
exorbitantly expensive for what I'm trying to replace and I'd have to buy a 
card which I didn't find developed long after my motherboard stopped being 
produced.  Thought about picking up a cheap scsi card, but there don't seem 
to be any scsi drives that use ultra wide or earlier scsi technology.  What 
are these hard drive manufacturers smoking?  You can buy a monster drive for 
a new system, but getting a smaller one that will work on older machines at 
an economical price without getting a tiny refurbished one is really hard. 
What's the site for computer shopper magazine?  Well, I guess if xosl can be 
booted from a hidden partition and allow a secondary boot from 
cd that I'll be going that route.  My bios will be boot to lan and then C 
soon as I get a flashable 3com nic.  I hate to replace the motherboard 
because I still use 98 which isn't supported anymore for my TI-92 
usb based graph link and for games.  Isn't life grand?  The PC is supposed
to be designed for compatibility, the reality is that a motherboard can be 
used for a workstation for only a few years because the hard drive 
specifications are too short sighted.

Seems like a losing battle in many ways.  It's probably not economical to
produce the older drives, especially if they don't work on the newer 
machines that most people seem to be getting now.

I wonder about my dad's computer that uses an adaptec 2940UW card as
the hard drive in it can't be replaced anymore either from what I've seen.

I guess I'm wondering if the VA503+ motherboard can take a UDMA133
controller card?  Maybe I should enable power management to enhance
the life of a new hard drive or put the new one in the tray and pull it out
when I'm terminal booting so that the motor doesn't wear.

How long does a hard drive technology stay in the market, anyone keeping
track?  It seems like only yesterday that a 10-20 gig drive was a large one.
I'm surprised as adequate as some of these older machines are that there
aren't companies like there are for classic cars that produce the older 
parts new.

It would drive the price up but it would sure be nice to be able to easily 
remove the motor in a hard drive and replace it without destroying that
drive.  I think a lot of hard drives stop working not because of bad media
or mechanical failure but because of worn out motors.

Is there a good site for general linux compatibility of motherboards so that I
can find out which one that is on the market now to buy if I go that route to
become compatible with hard drives that are new today?  If I do buy new
I should be at least serial ATA ready.

    --  Michael C. Robinson