On Mon, 18 Feb 2019 at 22:16, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > One of the moxt common causes of a terrible ear-piercing high whine is the > spindle contact. Many old drives had a springy piece that rubbed against > the end of the spindle. Over time, it would wear a divot, polish that, > and start to squeal. A very light pressure on it would test that > hypothesis. Not enough pressure to muffle the sound, and certaianly not > enough pressure to slow the spindle! Or, pulling up on it, away from the > spindle. Some people claimed that you could just rip it off. Don't. > Best is to twist it very slightly sideways, so that it can start wearing a > new divot.
It was a 3½" EIDE drive. 8GB one, I think, but might have been smaller. I didn't want to open it to do that, although there was a time when custom PC builders "de-lidded" hard disks and fitted them with little acrylic windows so you could see the head move. Not sure I'd want to trust my data to that... > Well, there don't seem to be many 350 RAMAC disks still running. > > (I'm trying to decide what to use as a base to make a patio table out of a > [crashed] RAMAC 24" platter) Conceded. And thank you for the reminder that I'm not old yet. My first machine with a hard disk was my work PC in my first job: an IBM PC-AT, with a 20 MB FS/FH 5¼" ST-506 drive, probably a Seagate ST-4026. I added a second drive to the machine, a 15 MB one, and put Xenix/286 on it. A few years ago I bought a surplus 2½" 1 TB drive from a chap who'd bought a new notebook and put an SSD in it before use. So, 2nd hand but unused. It cost me CzK 1000, about £30 at the time. £30 for a terabyte. I was in a state of shock. It was so tiny, too. I found an online capacity comparator thing. You'd need a pile of those Seagate drives the size of a _space shuttle_ to hold a terabyte. https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/53353.html -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
