-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 WC> Clarify please.
 WC> Both drives in my working machines are H.P. drives, were those the
 WC> ones that worked for you or the NEC drive?

 RJT> No,  the NEC drive is the one I yanked out of there that didn't work.
 RJT> So I guess the H-P drive is what got put in...

OK so I guess I'll give it a shot on the Packard Bell which is
currently fitted with an H.P. A drive.

 WC> Come to think of it the NEC drive is a replacement for the one in
 WC> that machine that failed so the drive I've been referring to as
 WC> NEC was actually pulled from my Packard Bell. Think that one's
 WC> actually Mitsumi or some such.

 RJT> I'm not all that fond of those either,  though I can't speak to its
 RJT> ability to do extended formats.

 I've had two of them fail.
 This last has a decade on it and is still going.

 RJT> Some drives will,  some won't,  and
 RJT> even in any given brand it may vary by model.  I would imagine that
 RJT> there's some more support for them than there used to be since even m$
 RJT> is using extended formats for stuff these days.

 I'm not going to need no stinking M$ support much longer :-)

 WC> It's all curbware hardware here now but I think it's amazing what
 WC> I've got going with it :-)

 RJT> Yeah,  I haven't bought retail or whole systems ever,  either.  :-)

My first was bought new in 1993 but nothing since 94 by way of
box or peripherals, just a bit of used memory.

 WC> Just the memory upgrade was purchased along with a few other bits
 WC> and pieces dirt cheap.

 RJT> I've bought drives,  some new some used,  and some MBs,  likewise.

I found the P.B. in a trash bin about 6 days before my original
P.B. box's motherboard smoked.
Moved a few jumpers, swapped CPU's and back in business with
two primary IDE channels instead of one as well as a 16550
instead of 8250 UART.

The H.P. I'm using just now was found on my doorstep
partially disassembled by a discouraged former
owner who'd given up on it.
It had a really annoying, and deadly to Win 98, intermittent
failure where the hard drive hanged requiring hard reboot.

Took me a while to figure out but it was merely the ribbon cable to the
drive :-)
HAD ALL the original software on CD, software manuals and
installation keys with it :-)

I've still got the 32 Meg and 64 Meg DIMMs I pulled from it
for my next low cost, or free, box that comes along.
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