just a heads up if anyone wants to buy an upgrade drive.

Dell Home Software & Peripherals has 20% off Dell branded accessories.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/index.asp

Brand new 2.5" IBM Travelstar 60GB 12ms 5400 RPM drive for $499 - 20% = $400 shipped free, no tax in most states. Search for 340-3196

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/travel/tr60gh.htm

I've been using these 20% off deals from Dell.com for some time. Never a problem. Dell has been great. Look around for 20% + stackable $15 off, happens from time to time.

For the life of me... I can't find the 60GB drive on thier site..

Search for 340-3196 on their store site.

It's there I just can't afford one because I just put new speakers in my car

I'm hoping they have a good deal on a drive one size smaller...

wow $400 for a 60 gig, that's a lot of money, granted if you need the space then it's necessary, but I just bought a 30 gig IBM travelstar for $144 sure they charged me $22 in shipping and handeling, but it's still proportionately less than the 60gig.

laptop drives are just too dang expensive

eli

I agree...those suckers are too expensive.

They're expensive, but you get what you pay for. 3.5" HDDs are made to work sat in a non-moving PC, and are sold in huge quantities - there's also a lot of price pressure.

2.5" HDDs are far more rugged, are sold into fewer applications and so are more expensive, and when you get to the top end (eg, IBM 60GB) there's very little competition - so they can sell them for what they like until another vendor starts shipping 60's.

Bear in mind that these drives typically go into top-of-the-range $5000 laptops.

Hugo

And of course more and more servers based around the blade design are begining to use laptop drives as well. The admins in this sector would rather pay more to avoid dead drive issues.

People keep saying desktop IDE could replace SCSI. SCSI still has a speed advantage, and is also more reliable. Sure it may be the same drive platters and heads in certain units, but that board full of electronics on the bottom of SCSI drives is doing something... And I have found that laptop drives usually fall between SCSI and desktop IDE for reliability.

I'm ashamed that my desktop Cheetah is only 18GB and I've got two 30GB 2.5" drives in my empeg.

I've never used an IDE primary drive in any of my personal desktop machines.

Bruno

Greetings!

It could always be worse. I am running a 4GB hard drive in the office (I know...), a 16GB hard drive at home, and a pair of 48s in the empeg. Looking at the 60s now...

Additional: Well, the deed is done. I will let everyone know how it goes.

I agree...those suckers are too expensive.

Oh, you poor babies!

I remember the good old days when we got excited that the cost on hard drives finally dropped to under a dollar per megabyte. By that standard your 60GB drive would cost over $60,000.

And I can remember even worse times... the five megabyte Winchester drive on my Datapoint mini-computer sold for over $8,000, and on average required a service call by the Datapoint technician about once a month. Extrapolating that cost per megabyte would give a ninety-six million dollar cost for a 60 GB drive.

$400 is too much, eh?

tanstaafl.

Ouch! I haven't heard the term "Winchester drive" in a very long time!!!

You are defintely an old timer there tanstaafl. I guess when comparing anything to the prices of yesteryear, we are defintely getting more for our money these days. I do remember paying $1500 for a 2GB SCSI drive just about 8-9 years ago. I guess I am getting old too.

Greetings!

You are defintely an old timer there tanstaafl.

It would seem so. Or at least, probably one of the oldest empeg owners out there.

Now there is an interesting poll - age of empeg owners... Or perhaps "first computer owned"... Either way...

I am 31. First computer owned was a Commodore 64 with a 1541 5.25" Floppy Drive.

I'm 24, but ditto on the first computer... Ahh.. .the Commodore 64...

Greetings!

34. My first computer (I almost hate to say it) was a DEC Pro350. PDP-11 running a varient of VMS.

Meanwhile, these hard drives are great!!!

23.
Apple ][e

Age: 24
Computer: IBM PCjr - Came with 128KB of RAM, upgraded to 640KB. Cartridge Basic. No Hard Drive. 2400 baud modem.

"640KB should be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates, 1981

28.

TI-99/4A.

Which, by the way, had one of the worst UI bugs ever. The keyboard had a ``FCTN'' key, which worked as a bucky-key of a nature. One of it's functions was to press FCTN-= to reset the computer (basically Ctrl-Alt-Del). The ``FCTN'' key was right next to the shift key, which was the size of a normal letter key, not the double-to-triple width as on most modern keyboards. The ``FCTN'' key was also small. This combination meant that if you were typing fast, and screwed up typing a ``+'' and missed the shift key by a little, you reset the entire computer. I started saving my little BASIC programs about every five lines of code that I typed in.

21.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 1 hooked up to the TV. About the only thing I can remember about it is the Sesame Street educational software.

After that was the Commodore 64... the first computer I can remember operating on my own.

I'm 25. First PC was a Tandy 1000 EX with 256k RAM. But wait! It had an expansion slot so you could upgrade it to a spacious 640k for ~$200. Add on a 1200 baud modem and you were in the fast lane, baby! Yeah! I believe the CPU was 7.16 MHz but could be slowed down to 4.77 MHz for those times when that "turbo speed" was just too much.

First computer game I ever played was Starflight, and I have yet to find another game that captured my imagination or wasted as much of my time. Amazing what you can do on two 360k disks.

21.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 1 hooked up to the TV. About the only thing I can remember about it is the Sesame Street educational software.

24. Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 1 hooked up to the TV. :-)

Best thing about it was loading programs off audio casette tapes.

Want a flashback? Here: My TRS-80.

Oh, that and my subscription to Rainbow magazine, where they had checksums on each page of code so that if you were keying in one of the 20+ page programs in the mag, you could make sure you typed everything correctly up to that point. Anyone remember that? :-)

I thought the trash-80 had a membrane keyboard, not chicklet. Am I remembering incorrectly or is that a different version?

My first; Atari 400 with that oh so wonderful membrane keyboard. The Commodore 64 I get next was like switching from a 386 to a Pentium 4.

The TRS80 Model 1 had membrane, if I remember correctly. The TRS80 Model 3 had a real keyboard. I don't remember the Model 2...

36, ZX81made from a kit

oh no, my model I definitely had a full-travel keyboard.

check out the picture at the top of this page.

--dan.

Im 29 but my dad was a computer science professor back in the 70's, so we always had "pc's" lying around the house.
My first taste was on a Commodore PET.
I then upgraded to the Commodore 64 (anybody remember Jumpman?)
Then an Amiga 500, then an Amiga 5000 (anybody remember Rocket Ranger).
Then I shrugged off computers for years and worked for the National Park Service in Maine (Acadia).
Didnt take though.
The web pulled me in in '96, been stuck ever since.
Now running a GB Pentium 4 Dell Optiplex, and a Poweredge 2200 PII400 webserver in the closet.
Plus endless periphals.
What a geek.

Must be one of the oldest gits around here @ 42...

1st computer? Apricot F1 (1979) with one floppy (720k) which you would use to load apps with (rendering program, word processor, spreadsheet) AND still have around 350k left to store files!

Why they called it F1 is beyond me... It did have an IR wireless keyboard, pretty funky at the time !