This thing can backup and emulate MFM/ST-506 hard drives for your retro computers

[@m0rph19]

The sound of that hard drive spinning up and seeking brings back many fond memories.

[@markevans2294]

The BeagleBone Black does have an audio output option. As well as a USB port. Thus it's likely possible to make this sound like an actual ST-506 :)

[@bobcarter6143]

Yes loved the sound of the disk spinning up - you used to be able to tell good from dodgy drives just by listening to them power up and seek.

[@alexandarcade]

I am glad it is not just me. I loved the sounds my drive made spinning up and initializing and still miss it.

[@parrottm76262]

Just when I think I've seen everything retro related, you show this mfm emulator. This is so fascinating and cool. So many talented people who refuse to let old computers die, and kudos to them. Thanks so much for another useful and awe inspiring video.

[@TheSulross]

Brandon Taylor Well, there is the matter of what to do with those old dial-up modems

[@G3DTrance]

@@TheSulross Yeah, that's true. However I think I saw a device that let you connect old dial up modems to your home WiFi. But, what about the speed? And in which cases it would be useful compared to any of the "local" solutions to transfer data...

[@TrondBørgeKrokli]

@@TheSulross Thanks for the chuckle. I confess I am torn between wishing those modems good riddance, and thinking that maybe they should be saved at least for museum usage.

[@daghtus]

@Brandon Taylor That sounds like pro-life computer movement 😎

[@compu85]

David’s MFM Emulator is like magic to me. That it can figure out the encoding from basically any encoder, dump that to a disk image, or host it back to the system… incredible!

[@Vanders456]

"If the interleave is one step beyond..." *Saxophone kicks in*

[@SGgrc]

Adrian! WHAT a kick! It was so cool to see that ancient copy of SpinRite actually running and cranking away... and, sure enough, confirming your suspicion that the 1:1 interleave was "one too tight" and thus being the WORST possible interleave for that controller. As you may know, I'm currently working on SpinRite v6.1. Remind me once you see that v6.1 is released and I'll be sure to send you a download link! WHAT a hoot! :) /Steve.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Awesome about 6.1! Yeah I have a stack of MFM and RLL drives on which I run Spinrite periodically to keep them all running tip top. I used the old Spinrite II back when I was in high school working at a computer store. I got many customer machines working again after running it overnight. Good memories!

[@guffaw1711]

This video is also a nice introduction to the MFM disk system. I learned a lot about them.

[@XLessThanZ]

Amazing you still have an MFM drive. Looking at it brings back memories. Even that mention of the floppy/hd cable difference with the flip. That's how I used to recognize one from the other, since we had tons of them lying around. Nice work. 👍👍

[@brufnus]

I have all kinds of MFM drives, some 11-12 still working drives. Everything from ST125/ST-225/ST-251 over IBM full size 20 MB, Toshiba, Miniscribe, Epson, Rodime, even a Tandon 262. Amazing they're still alive! 😀

[@TrondBørgeKrokli]

Thank you so much for this treat of an episode, it brought back so many forgotten memories of old-school hardware from the late 1980s for me. I remember particularly the years 1989-1992 where I had the most interaction with similar cables, cards and harddrives. I had completely forgotten how good it feels to look back and realize how much the technology has changed since then.

[@dansimpson6844]

What a timely video! I just ordered on of these to replace the drive in my HP-9133 HP-IB drive.

[@Vermilicious]

Well, now we need a fixing video on the faulty controller card. Since he has another working one, it should be possible!

[@evertonshorts9376]

The Commodore 900 was a prototype "unix" workstation running Coherent. The case looks very similar to the Amiga 2000.

[@rtechlab6254]

They were actually sold

[@AxelWerner]

Commodore AND UNIX at the same time ?!?

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

Was that the system that they used the NatSemi 32-bit CPU in that everyone became disappointed with? The Commodore engineers who moved over to Atari Corp originally were hot to use that chip in the RBP/ST until it proved to be inferior and they pivoted to the trusty 68000.

[@Zeem4]

@@TheJeremyHolloway According to Wikipedia, the Commodore 900 was based on the Zilog Z8000. The NS32016 got some use in UK academic settings, thanks to Acorn's coprocessor for the BBC computer, the related Acorn Cambridge Workstation and Master Scientific computers, and the Panos operating system that they wrote for it.

[@joshuarichards2421]

Holy crap! I have an ST225 SCSI version... Was in my Apple 20SC External enclosure. It still works, so I took it out to keep it working for a few more years, (Popped a relay driven auto head parking 320mb server HDD into the encosure... My Mac Plus SCREAMS with that drive hooked up!) but it is amazing to see another one of these drives, even if it's MFM rather than SCSI!

[@chadhartsees]

Didn't expect crossover to the PDP world!

[@irdmoose]

Since you're struggling with Candy Reviews, if you have a video that isn't long enough... perhaps you could tack a "Adrian's Candy Corner" to the end of a video. You could also potentially do them as KZbin Shorts. I'm not a KZbinr myself, but I've seen lots of KZbinrs talk about appeasing the Algorithm Gods with shorts.

[@miss_gray]

What a cool little device! But, I personally /love/ the sound of old hard drives!

[@KayRamme]

may be add a speaker :-D

[@miss_gray]

@@blitzwing1 I can definitely understand why people would not like the sound, but for some reason I just really love it!

[@orinokonx01]

Ooooo!! I'm in the process of building one of these! I have a very special computer with some software on a MFM drive that needs immediate backup. I'll get the popcorn and enjoy this video!

[@YonezH]

As a rough estimate, the 512MB of RAM on that BeagleBone is able to hold the complete contents of 3 of the largest ever MFM hard drives. And the CPU is able to emulate any system that ever had an MFM drive. This just illustrates the absurdity and greatness of emulation and hardware development all at the same time.

[@MrDarchangelomni]

Nothing in the world of electronics sounds better than the ibm 5170 starting up dos 6.2 with disk compression enabled... It is hypnotic, and if you are doing your high school homework, can result in instant sleepiness.

[@francoisrevol7926]

Unlike DOS prompts, shells on GNU/Linux usually keep the history around, so you can search it for previous commands to avoid retyping it :-) (up arrow, or ctrl-r …)

[@ankomcoper1183]

Me pressing up a hundred times looking for an "ls".

[@steve6375]

Seagate ST225 was famous for off track writes under changing temperature conditions. Alan Sugar of Amstrad took Seagate to court over it because he used it in his PCs (read his autobiography) and it pretty much killed all consumer confidence in Amstrad PCs.

[@RetroJack]

I had one that died and I used the cover as a catfood dish!

[@grossteilfahrer]

Yeah they are in atari ST megafile 20:s and sh 205. Its a choice - format cold, use cold and let cool when it starts acting up, or format it warm, and let it warm up 20 minutes before booting every time you want to use the machine.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

@@grossteilfahrer so, moral of the story, Seagate has always been terrible...

[@theradioweyr]

@@TheJeremyHolloway Yes, give me a Micropolis any day. We cried when they closed their doors.

[@GrowlyBear917]

I ran a BBS on an Atari 130xe using the Seagate ST-225 with an Adaptec ACB4000 controller, later a Xebec 1420. The equipment was right next to my bed at home. My employer sent me out to a training class and I had to stay in a hotel for two nights. Could not sleep because I was not accustomed to the silence! Then later on I upgraded the drive to a Seagate ST-4096. What a big difference in the noise level. One good thing is the larger drive helped keep my bedroom warm in the winter. I still have the drives, controllers, the ICD Multi-I/O, and the computer. All of that stuff still works, but has not been powered up since 1996.

[@jeremylindemann5117]

I'm not sure how bulky your old equipment is but they sound like something that would be good to feature on Adrian's Digital Basement.

[@AxelWerner]

Even i never ever handled a MFM HDD, this episode made me happy, seeing that old tech parts now can be replaced with new/working thus reviving very old computers. no gear should ever be trashed, just because one part fails at one point and 90% is still fine. I LOVE REPAIRS!!!

[@budmartin8297]

Man, this brought back so many memories of working on these "old" systems. I had nearly forgotten all the eccentricities of those controller cards, drives, cables and software. I used spinrite daily along with some others that elude me now. What fun. I had a failing st 225 on my shop PC that ran for months and months with the cover off, since once in a blue moon, the read/write head would stick. LOL. Talk about HDD noise, try it with the cover off. I'm enjoying these videos. Ever use a book titled "the hard drive bible" to get drive specs on almost every drive made up to printing?

[@danman32]

If I recall correctly, the twist in the large cable simply changes the drive selector so you wouldn't have to mess with the jumper on the drive to specify drive 0 or 1. IOW if both drives are jumpered as drive 0, the twist would change the selection for one of the drives to be drive 1. You could instead have no twist at all and use the jumper on the drive to specify drive 1.

[@Codeaholic1]

A good sync; sync; sync. Is usually good enough to flush the disk cache before pulling power.

[@applesushi]

This is the first ADB video that needed a content warning 😂

[@VenomStryker]

WARNING: Contains arachnids. :-)

[@DavidWonn]

3:28 I think we’re going to need a bigger debugger.

[@UpLateGeek]

This works surprisingly well and looks pretty full featured for an open source project. Definitely have to file this away in case I ever get my 5170 motherboard working. I actually kind of like the sound of old MFM drives, although I can imagine it might get annoying if you're working on machines for hours at a time. As for the tarantula, definitely not a fan! No way I'd consider eating it, so you're a braver man than me for saying on record that you'd eat it!

[@brufnus]

Indeed, especially the ST-251 is annoyingly noisy c".) However, when using drives like ST-125, ST-1100 or Rodime 3055, it's not that bad. The sound they make, is so exotic though... every single type having it's own distinct sound; I bet a real hardcore enthusiast is able to tell exactly which model it is by the mere sound of it. 😀

[@IgnacioCarreraAR]

I think I need a compilation video with Adrian saying "wow it works!" excitedly for like 1 hour

[@ruthlessadmin]

As a kid, the games distracted me from the whine of the HDD, but as an adult, I am definitely glad that my modern PCs are reduced to relatively quiet fans. Soon enough, though, I will be hearing those old sounds again, as I revive my own collection.

[@theposguy1435]

When I was first building computers I had 2 st225 drives with windows 95 .. I had to reinstall all the time then I got a 115 mb ide drive and that was heaven ..thanks for the video!

[@another3997]

Not only is it fantastic that some seriously talented people design and build products like this, but they even give you a BOM and tell you how to build your own. 🙂 Perhaps the best part of all these videos though, is that, considering how expensive or rare some things are, there are people out there who will happily just donate such items to a channel like Adrian's. Ok, I admit that whilst I'm very glad they do, I'm still just a little envious! 😉

[@bengmo64]

That disk emulator needs a speaker so it can make beautiful soothing hard drive music

[@brufnus]

Indeed... especially the ST-251 is a PITA to listen to. I use mine for backups only and rely on my 3.5 inch drives for actual use (that is, until I receive that MFM emulator, too... that's definitely a card worth purchasing!) 😀

[@kaitlyn__L]

Gosh, I am really looking forward to seeing that AT&T workstation revived :) I know you’ve got other projects currently and I’m not in a rush, but I loooove old UNIX, and that hardware is so unique! It’d be especially interesting if you could even remote-into it on your modern network.

[@cbrennan1983]

I wonder if the candy video problem is a KZbin algorithms and not your awesome content keep it up love watching anything you produce

[@AceStrife]

Channels that do regular videos and livestreams have to put their livestreams on a second channel because the algorithm tanks their channel if they don't. Wouldn't be surprised if it's done the same there, since it's not related to tech (the entire focus of the channel) in the slightest. Though, I'm sure a lot of people watching Adrian just don't care about candy reviews. They'll probably watch it if it's stuck in a normal video, but wouldn't watch a full on video about it.

[@RetroTechChris]

Very cool! I think I saw one of these in person recently in a Tandy 2000 if I am not mistaken. What a very cool and well thought out design.

[@JVHShack]

@Adrian Perhaps to solve the conundrum of deciding which computer to install the MFM emulator into, you could buy the bare board and components and make another video on that then install it into the 5170. I would honestly use the one you have and get the AT&T PC running since you made videos about the 5170 recently so you can keep the variety going. I just might have to get one of these cards for myself so I can use the only MFM controller that I own.

[@matthewellisor5835]

I'd bet that it would taste better than an eraser!

[@nickcliff]

This came up on security now podcast giving a watch and a sub right now

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

The DEC PDP-11 was a right hoot to operate as was the DEC VAX750S.

[@ionstorm66]

It would be really cool to get a small LCD or OLED and put it on the front panel of the drive to show the status of the BeagleBone

[@f1lupo]

well well my original 33 MFM drive I was using with my Amiga 1000 since 1989 just stopped working and this video came up 👍🙏🏻

[@sinisterpisces]

Sadly, I couldn't make it to the gym today, but as an arachanophobe, the surprise edible spider got me all the cardio I could want. That. Was an experience. Mad respect to Adrian for handling that with verve. I'm not sure I'd be at all coherent if someone sent me a gigantic spider in the mail. I'd probably have to move. :) I feel like Stewart is sending us a message: "You could have had nice, relaxing candy reviews, but you have chosen ... poorly." :P

[@radio-ged4626]

Back in the late '80s early '90s I used to rebuild hard disks in a clean room. I remember the ST225 and ST251 drives and I think there was a ST270? which used RLL as its data writing method. I might have the model numbers wrong there as it was a long time ago. We used to replace the platters, heads, motors and re-write the servo. Low level and then high level format them in DOS for a boot and test. We had a dedicated machine to thrash the refurbished hard disks on (after a lengthy spin up soak test) before we stuck them on a PC for the final formats and testing. To lower the heads back onto the media we made head spacers out of clear plastic which we gently rotated with tweezers to lower the heads down. All this in a face mask and paper suit with cold filtered air being blown onto you at a rate of knots. The 3.5" HDDs with multiple heads and platters were the trickiest to do.

[@munocat]

I am excited for the at&t blogs

[@martinenglish6641]

Hardware Emulators and firmware Emulators to get mainframes to talk to servers. Fun. Brings back memories. :)

[@stevesether]

If I were you, I'd put the over-engineered MFM emulator into the over-engineered AT&T Unix workstation. Let AT&T Unix be reliant on modern Linux for its storage solution. It seems fair. Linux basically made all those old Unix servers obsolete. The least it can do is help an aging Unix machine live again. IMO the "purity" of the 5170 is just a bit silly. The idea that these machines never had some other component in them, and you had to maintain some semblance of using all IBM parts is just... wrong. People have been upgrading, expanding, and putting new components in them since they were created. That's why IBM put slots in the computer.

[@spykillergames8402]

it would be appropriate too as linux is essentially modern unix

[@TheSulross]

yeah, as far as I'm concerned, getting the motherboard, the bios, and some original OS to boot is job accomplished; going original for storage is more like a fussy museum curator's hang-up

[@stevesether]

@@TheSulross I think that's a good way to frame this. If you think of the computer as something that just sits on a shelf to look pretty, having everything "original" is maybe a good thing to be concerned about. If you want the computer to live (This was Paul Allen's idea with the living computer museum), then you need to provide modern components so it can actually function. I mean, does replacing the capacitors ruin the purity? The real question here is, what are "we" trying to preserve?

[@1000davetron]

Take a drink every time Adrian says Beagle Bone.

[@_Funtime60]

Can you tell it to "fix" the bad sectors on the emulated disk? That'd be neat.

[@johnnygames857]

awesome video :) this is a gamechanger for sure

[@brufnus]

So... now I've used that emulator for my Myarc Geneve 9640 with a Myarc HFDC controller for some time, the latter is supposed to support up to 134 MB per drive according to Myarc (up to 8 heads and 2048 cylinders), but a minor modification makes it work with up to 16 heads. There's a file system limit though, so the limit is at 250 MB per drive, i.e. half a gig with this emulator. I was kind of excited since it was pretty much experimental; I'm not sure anyone have ever gone that high with the HFDC before, but it works absolutely perfect! Until then my largest drive was a 44 meg Rodime, which isn't too stable anymore by the way. I'm equally impressed with this emulator and I don't regret for a second that I purchased that one from David... it's absolutely awesome how it works! 😀

[@MurderMostFowl]

I used to work in the IT department at a large University in the late 90’s. I can’t tell you the number of these drives we sent to the salvage yard or destroyed. This and old SunOS, Sequent, Digital, IBM systems. It was heartbreaking at first all this old solid tech, but truly there was nothing we could do with any of it. Some of my friends would gut out the old Sequent cages and use them as general purpose 19” racks, but the hard drives were hard to justify as anything. The rare earth magnets inside was the only thing anyone kept. These days I have mixed feelings about it all.

[@mapesdhs597]

The one brand that's retained relevance from that era wrt legacy hardware, in both commercial and hobbyist use, is SGIs, but they're a realm of vintage tech of which few are much aware. Still used by textile manufacturers, medical comanies, defense companies, miscellaneous industrial processes and especially PCB manufacturers including TI and Global Foundries, plus a great many hobbyists.

[@DaveGagliardi]

what an amazing find... so glad to see that emulation for trs-80 model 4p's works! This is a decent alternative to a FreHD which is produced by Ian Mavric.

[@Megatog615]

I would really enjoy a video of you building one of these in kit form.

[@absalomdraconis]

Definitely sounds like something to get several of.

[@emblemi6345]

3:28 imagine opening this as a birthday gift

[@Ramdileo_sys]

at 3:28.. I got the same "vibe" that when someone sent a real radioactive ☢️ clock to @Fran Blanche 🥵🥵 >> kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZnuWlKhsbLh1kLs ... Actually.. a radioactive clock would have been better that this 🕷️"candy"🕷️ .. 🤮 ..

[@VenomStryker]

I thought the candy reviews were crazy and now you're doing Tarantulas?! lmao! Interesting though! I had no idea you could order freeze dried tarantulas to eat. :-)

[@absalomdraconis]

I understand it to have started during the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and just stuck around as a performative-remembrance of the whole trauma. Also, supposedly at least the legs have about the flavor & texture of shell-on shrimp.

[@bobdobalina3971]

Now if only the card emulated the sound of the hard drive!

[@crazyedo9979]

You can leave the old drive in the bay. Only connect power to the molex socket. This is what I' m doing on the 5150/5160' ies

[@Vintechfinder]

@@crazyedo9979 sure you get the spin up and idle drive sounds, but you can't park the heads or hear the chunky seeking noises

[@edgeeffect]

"not just this particular model".... I used to specifically collect ST-225s... they're slow but I'm convinced to this day that you could play football with them and they'd still be error-free.

[@patrickelliott2169]

Thinking would be dang funny to have such an emulation board, for if something was making a movie, or the like (or just to get the true feel of such a thing), which "includes" a speaker and emulation of the "noise" from the drive, for "real authenticity". lol

[@Megabobster]

I think there are gotek firmwares that support fake drive noise

[@kaitlyn__L]

Another comment asked for that :)

[@jjock3239]

I saw a program where South American natives feast on the tarantulas, and they burn the hair off over an open flame, before consuming the spider. It is a real treat for them. Your mileage may differ. :-)

[@tpelton]

thank goodness that tarantula was packaged in 100x it's own weight in single use plastic.

[@goeland4585]

This project is so cool! A board that also replace the controller card would be even more interesting though! :)

[@Colin_Ames]

What a cool piece of kit!

[@BlackEpyon]

Oh, that tarantula gave me Hachama Cooking flashbacks.

[@CanuckGod]

Same 😂

[@maxtornogood]

Contrary to your opinion I actually like the old hard drive whine but this emulation looks pretty neat too!

[@karlschuneman7960]

Both BOM's do work, look at the cart, 25 items. Digi-Key was showing 3 items with sourcing problems, 2 items suggested replacements and the DC to DC convertor is not available from either source as the manufacture is discontinuing March of 2022.

[@Spelter]

Wow, I even cant remember this, I was so young I just followed the instructions of my 286. But what baffles me, I never had to park my headers, so did i have an IDE drive already? Damn, its 30 years ago

[@TotoGuy-Original]

I liked the website because it was completely old school with very basic HTML its fitting for what the products are for.

[@Pest789]

Man I had totally forgotten what a pain in the ass properly setting up an MFM drive was.

[@RVail623]

There was a "free ware" software program (don't recall the name) that had as it's only function to first determine the speediest hard drive interleave, then could proceed to re-format the drive to that "ideal" interleave, with all data intact. Required booting from a floppy drive to a DOS prompt, then launching the program from a command prompt.

[@davidmcgill1000]

Great, now I'm picturing Adrian pouring a bunch of spiders into a blender and making a shake.

[@nickfifteen]

>TRS-80 Model 4P You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention...!

That is a super cool product.

[@markwanklyn4195]

the WD1006 and WD1003 were very similar, however the WD1006 was the 'performance' version as it could support drives formatted with 1:1 interleave whereas the WD1003 could only do 3:1 - so the WD1006 could read all the sectors on a track in a single rotation while the WD1003 required three rotations. I had a 5170 with the WD1006 along with a pair of Seagate ST251-1 40MB drives (performance version of the ST251 with 28ms rather than the standard drives' 40ms)

[@bobvines00]

Adrian, yes, David's stuff is top-notch. He is an EE, but the site is a hobby to (mostly) provide info for PDP-8 owners (like David), so that's probably why the emulator page isn't "slick."

[@lerkzor]

Can you adjust the interleave and bad sectors on the HDD emulator? Preferably without losing data? Thanks for this review, very cool technology.

[@RetroJack]

I'm pretty sure that the Russian Elektronika 85 listed in the compatibility list is what Tetris was originally developed on.

[@ManolloCraft]

It is a pretty cool piece of tech, however, for me the sound of the old drives is just part of retro computing. I just love the seeking noises, the quirkier the better!

[@senilyDeluxe]

if the beaglebone reports two control lines active at the same time that shouldn't be, there's a decent chance some simple TTL IC on the controller card failed.

[@fredflintstone505]

I had an Atari Mega ST 2 modded with 4MB of ram with an Atari Megafile 30 that had the Seagate ST-225 Hard Drive in it. Which I replaced with one the 70MB harddrive. With MFM the ST-225 could store 20MB. With RLL it could store 30MB. I used mine mainly for DTP.

[@vincei4252]

I bought Dave's emulator to help me restore a Whitechapel MG-1 workstation from the 80's. I have the MFM drive that goes with it but I'm a little paranoid about powering it up.

[@DatBlueHusky]

i wonder if theres a smaller board that uses a raspberry pi zero instead so makes it cheaper and easier to use also control it over wifi

[@absalomdraconis]

Sounds specialty enough that it probably doesn't exist yet. Also, when last I heard the Pi Zeros were always rare enough that you'd probably be better off running a full-custom board with a processor/microcontroller that linux or bsd support out of the box instead.

[@DatBlueHusky]

@@absalomdraconis what you mean rare pi zeros? they still sell them everywhere and you can get them for almost low as $5 for one.

[@MinhasA]

Adrian, I for one liked your candy vid and I hope you do more in the future... I am in nerd introvert, which I'm confident most of your audience is as well... I beg you to keep that idea on at least the back burner and maybe do some research into more "successful" formats. I like learning about candies especially from someone who's opinion I respect. Stay safe from Ohio USA

[@mikeuk666]

Only the attention seeking kids complained

[@kepkepler8941]

WD1003-WA2, feature F003R - Hard disk controller card with an ST506/ST412 interface, full AT form factor. It supports 2 MFM drives with up to 16 heads and 2048 cylinders, at 3:1 interleave and 2 floppy disk drives (360K and 1.2 MB). WD1003A-WA2, feature F003R - Hard disk controller card with an ST506/ST412 interface, full XT form factor. It supports 2 MFM drives with up to 16 heads and 2048 cylinders, at 3:1 interleave and 2 floppy disk drives (360K and 1.2 MB). WD1003V-MM2, feature F300R - Hard disk controller card with an ST506/ST412 interface. It supports a maximum of 2 MFM drives with up to 16 heads and 2048 cylinders at 2:1 interleave, and 2 floppy disk drives (5-1/4" 360K, 1.2Mb; 3-1/2" 720K, 1.44Mb). The "V" boards can run in high speed AT systems, (10 to 16 megahertz system speed). WD1006V-MM2, feature F300R - Hard disk controller card with an ST506/ST412 interface. It supports a maximum of 2 MFM drives with up to 16 heads and 2048 cylinders at 1:1 interleave and faster data transfer due to "look ahead caching" and 2 floppy disk drives (5-1/4" 360K, 1.2 Mb; 3-1/2" 720K, 1.44 Mb). The "V" boards can run in high speed AT systems, (10 to 16 megahertz system speed).

[@MD4564]

This would be pretty cool emulation for other channels like Curiousmarc channel.

[@JarrodCoombes]

Adrianne - SSH is now built into Windows, no need for puTTY anymore, just run the command prompt and use ssh like you would on any linux machine. It's pretty awesome.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Whoa -- I actually had no idea about that! Thanks!

[@xPLAYnOfficial]

You could imitate what Craft Computing does, where at the end of each episode he does a little mini-review of a new beverage he's trying. Could do something similar with the candy.

[@wishusknight3009]

I am with you on the hard drive noise thing.. I was really happy once the whine was gone. I am however ok with the seek noises. I rather enjoy the clunks of old scsi drives.

[@alfulton5946]

I will definitely watch the spider eating review.

[@minty_Joe]

"Boris The Spider" by The Who comes to mind. ;-)

[@dlarge6502]

I wouldnt have used large caps to allow for some shutdown time. I'd just used a couple of 500mAh AAA batteries, low capacity ones that you use in DECT phones. Standard, replaceable, rarely leak (they are such a low value I have never seen one leak) and a simple step up to 5v will power the thing long enough to shutdown. Just a gentle trickle charge to keep them topped up, they will last for years. I'd only do this for cost reasons and the fact the caps will kill the board when they fail.

[@organiccold]

Thats amazing..i need one of those :)

[@gnustep]

The Commodore 900 was C='s UNIX machine.

[@Cherijo78]

I appreciate this technology, but personally I prefer to stick with an XTIDE and CF card setup in my 5160. The CF card setup allows me to swap out my entire DOS setup in a very easy and obvious way. In other computers where it wasn't as easy to switch over, or with fewer slots such as a 5150, I could see this being more useful. In my 5160, I left my half height ST-238R in place, unplugged it, and set my WD1002a-wx1 controller to disable the BIOS. This way, the hard drive is still in there ready to go with a few simple changes, and I don't have to store it somewhere else away from the computer itself. I do miss the noises of the old hard drive, but since mine is working, I decided to park it and leave it in place so as not to wear it out too fast.

[@infamousacidrain]

I would definitely save that emu for the Unix machine. The IBM will do just fine with the Emu hardware it has.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

Seems you were rewarded with a spider goulash! xD

[@evensgrey]

The Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-8 would never have been factory-equipped with the Shugart Associates ST-506 hard drive, as it cease production before the ST-506 was released.

[@MarbledPaladin]

Wasn't the twist thing in the cable because all drives jumpers were set to be the second drives and the twist was there to make it the first?

[@kepkepler8941]

Start up delay was standard on controllers of this era

[@pauledwards2817]

Yaaaay. The Northstar Horizon. First computer I ever used. Not often that gets name dropped on KZbin.