Pooling

[garycase]

... r.e. Spinrite:  I've seen occasional notes from Steve that indicate he's "thinking about" a newer version ... but the fact is v6 was released a LONG time ago (9 years ago) ... so it's certainly debatable whether we'll see any more releases.    HOWEVER ... in a "Security Now" interview in June of last year, Steve said he was now "working on Spinrite v6.1" ... and that, as he'd said years earlier, "...  The upgrade to v6.1 (and any other "dot releases") of SpinRite will be no-charge ..."    He also said last year that he already had identified what needs to change for v6.1, and that he had a few ideas for a new, file-system-aware v7 for "sometime in the future."

 

On the other hand, it's been nearly a year and still no v6.1        He was asked in the interview last year if there was a target date for 6.1, and his response was "... I don't work with deadlines."    So I certainly wouldn't bank on it ... and I think the reality is it is NOT actively being developed.

 

 

Nevertheless, the current v6 is still a very handy tool . but the simple fact is that with (a) the size of modern drives (and thus the exceptionally long time to run a Level 3 or higher pass on them) and (b) the extremely LOW cost of modern drives [they're practically free  ],  it's simply not a utility I use much these days.  Not worth the bother on the larger TB+ drives of today.

 

[SSD]

Yes, I've done that a a lot more.    I've been "messing" with computers since I was a young (15) college freshman; and have had them at home since the Altair.  My first hard drive was a 26MB 14" platter Seagate -- cost me $4500 at a time when I definitely could NOT really afford it ... but I did it anyway    => today I could easily afford that, but drives cost a tiny fraction of that !! 

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair. No hard dirve. I think it had 2k of memory. As you wrote programs the number of lines displayed on the screen shunk because it was using that memory for the program. My Dad was a big TRS-80 guy.

 

My first real computer was a dual floppy Compaq luggable, given to me as a bonus by my employer. Cost them $5,000. My first hard disk was a Seagate ST-225 (i think that is right). A 20Mb HH 5 1/4" beast that replaced my 2nd floppy drive in my Compaq.  I don't remember the cost of that, but do remember buying a Seagate ST-4096. A ginormous drive that stored everything I owned and then some. 80Mb. I got an incredible deal from the back of PC Week - $1500.

[trurl]

Commodore Pet, 4K RAM, cassette tape for mass storage

[JonathanM]

TI 99/4A, cassette tape, speech synthesizer, expansion dock, etc.

 

I still have it somewhere in a closet, I'm pretty sure I could fire it back up. The hard part would be finding a monitor. I suppose I could hook it up with the channel 3/4 modulator to the input of an old TV capture board. 

[garycase]

You guys are all youngsters -- those were well past the days of the Altair, IMSAI, North Star, Digital Group, etc.    I had all of those ... plus a Heathkit H-11 (basically a small DEC PDP-11), and a very well-equipped CompuPro.   

 

I shudder to think of how much I spent on my hobby in those days -- each of my first 5 machines cost over $3,000;  my first printer (a slow 8-pin dot matrix unit) cost ~ $1000;  my NEC Spinwriter was $4000;  as I noted before my first hard drive was a small fortune;  and memory was insanely expensive for the early machines (a 4K card cost over $1,000).    I was working a 2nd job and doing some consulting just to fund my hobby      [Deal with my very-understanding wife:  spend whatever you want as long as you made enough on the 2nd job to pay for it  ]

 

[SSD]

Wow, I feel young again!  8)

 

I did use a Northstar (I think) in school. Z80/CPM based machine?

 

I never used any of the old DEC stuff. Had a friend that was really into it though. A couple 3 years older than me.

[garycase]

Yes, a Northstar Horizon was a Z80-based CP/M machine with a pair of 5.25" floppies.

 

[jbartlett]

I converted Norton Utilities disk checkers into Atari BASIC back in the late 80's because the Atari would reject a floppy if it couldn't format it 100% successfully. Would scan the floppy to look for bad sectors, map them out in it's version of FAT, and flag the floppy as valid.

 

I'm still amazed at the stuff I did on the Atari 800 XL. Had a 1050 floppy drive that uses a flat piece of metal to lift the drive clamp off the floppy - closing the floppy provided a tiny bit of flex. I broke that piece of metal due to metal fatigue. Had to physically press the clamp down in place so the disk would spin.

[trurl]

You guys are all youngsters -- those were well past the days of the Altair, IMSAI, North Star, Digital Group, etc.    I had all of those ... plus a Heathkit H-11 (basically a small DEC PDP-11), and a very well-equipped CompuPro.   

I wanted those but I was a poor college student at the time. Got to play with the 8080 development kits in lab though.