Not much Gold, but a piece of History....

[MMFJ]

Just pulled this apart - an iOmega Alpha 10 Bernoulli disk drive, with a 'partner' DUAL 8" floppy drive - all in the same, rack-mount!

Not much in the way of recoverables (other than those chips, some pins, fingers, that nice red switch, etc. - obvious stuff for the most part) - have not yet done much research for just reselling, but they were fairly common, so not too sure there's much interest out there in the collector world.

Thought I'd put it up here - for those that have never seen an EIGHT INCH floppy drive (yes, they really did exist and would hold a whole 10-megabytes :!: )

Brought back some memories for me!

 

[FrugalRefiner]

MMFJ, Neat old relic.

My first computer was a 12MHz 80286 with a 40 MByte hard drive. For about $2,000 it was a bargain and better than most of the computers where I worked. :shock:

Dave

 

[darshevo]

Funny, I thought all iOmega ever did was saddle us with those god-forsaken zip drives :mrgreen:

 

[jmdlcar]

My first real computer was 80186.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

ROFL. When I went to high school in Panama when I graduatedin 80 they were using punch card cmputers, n I wasn't in the computer club. First cmputer I worked with on the farm was an Apple IIe with dual floppys. I still have one too, is was built as an estimating computer and still worked last time I booted it up. 8)

 

[MMFJ]

What I find pretty interesting is that, presuming that model number ends in the manufacture year (not an uncommon thing, and it matches with the timeframe of the Alpha 10), the SINGLE drive (dated 83) is the same size as the DOUBLE drive (dated 84). The technology is so vastly different, with all the cards on the older unit (looking in there I haven't found the drive mechanism - its hidden behind all the circuits!).

Kinda cool - sure hate to tear them apart, but we always have the pictures!

(btw, my first computer was the Apple ][e (note the CORRECT way to type it! 8) I wanted the Radio Shack TRS-80 but my mother went by herself to buy it (and spent something like $10K for the computer and the programs, etc.). We played "Lemonade Stand" on that thing for hours - mostly because we had to load the program from a CASSETTE TAPE (floppy disks came later!) - took about 10 minutes to load a 100 (or so) line program!

Within two years, I was teaching a class on computer programming with that thing to a little group in our small OK town. Had to give it up to go to college, where I went 'back in time' to enter programs on a key-punch machine! They did have the first hard drive I ever saw, though, where the computer science majors were allowed to store our program and run it - once. If it kicked out a fault or anything, we had to go sorting through our cards, trying to find the error, then get back in line to try a second run (yes, that is where I first learned about 'hanging chad', in case anyone was wondering.....)!

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Wow, it's great to be among a bunch of fellow dinosaurs! :lol:

Usually when I mention 80286 or 40 MB hard drives its met by blank stares. Although I never used punch cards, the first machine I ever worked on was a 4.7MHz 8088 with no hard drive, just a pair of 360K floppy drives and a mean green mono monitor. But they were out of my reach financially for home use. I had to wait till prices came down to the $2,000 range before I could convince my wife that people really did need a computer in their home. 8)

Dave

 

[Golddigger Greg]

I guess I'm a dinosuar too..., a friend of mine bought a spanky-new TRS80 that had us enthralled for weeks! We bought a Vic 20 and later, the C64 for the family. My stepfather probably still has both kicking around the house.
Another friend had an IBM 8088 that we played golf on; took nearly as long as a real round!
My first home system was a 286-12MHz with the 40MB hard drive and it was the real deal! :wink:
Back to the topic, we had some of those 8 inch drives come in as a donation to a non-profit that I worked at, and I was surprised at the number of my co-workers that had no idea what these were! :lol:

 

[BAMGOLD]

I miss my old C64, had a 186 too. I was...6-8yrs old?? lol

 

[publius]

I still have my old Apple ][e (enhanced) with duo drives... 20 minutes to load dos then another 5 for the brown bag word processor. How time flies!

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

Old computers, it's amazing how far they have come.

I have a few old computers, a PET, Atari 400 with the cartridges, the first computer I personally purchased in 1979, it's an NEC 8801 with an 8 and 16 bit processor, two 8 inch drives, dual 5 1/4 inch drives, and a 1 megabyte winchester drive. At the time the sales person told me I would never need anymore space than the one gigabyte. It's about half the size of a shoe box. Oh yes, and the final piece of equipment, which at the time put me in a totally different class of computing, a 300 bps acoustic coupler modem, the type you dialed on your rotary phone first, waited for the computer on the other end to answer, then attached the handset to the base, and strapped it in.

Computers have come a very long way, indeed.

Scott