• Welcome to the Off-Topic/Schweb's Lounge

    In addition to the Mac-Forums Community Guidelines, there are a few things you should pay attention to while in The Lounge.

    Lounge Rules
    • If your post belongs in a different forum, please post it there.
    • While this area is for off-topic conversations, that doesn't mean that every conversation will be permitted. The moderators will, at their sole discretion, close or delete any threads which do not serve a beneficial purpose to the community.

    Understand that while The Lounge is here as a place to relax and discuss random topics, that doesn't mean we will allow any topic. Topics which are inflammatory, hurtful, or otherwise clash with our Mac-Forums Community Guidelines will be removed.

What To Do With It

Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
3,612
Reaction score
95
Points
48
Location
Amberley, Canterbury, New Zealand
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
Wait for it - a fully-functioning 4 Gb Quantum Bigfoot 5.25 hard drive Image:Quantum Bigfoot HDD.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Stripped from a really old IBM Win desktop machine, and reformatted FAT32, it is now connected to my eMac with an adaptor. Now what am I going to do with it? I could store perhaps one full-length movie. Wow, once upon a time, 4 Gb was considered a large capacity for a HD.
 
Joined
Jul 30, 2008
Messages
293
Reaction score
9
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
Black 2.2 GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 160GB HD, Super Drive
Wait for it - a fully-functioning 4 Gb Quantum Bigfoot 5.25 hard drive Image:Quantum Bigfoot HDD.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Stripped from a really old IBM Win desktop machine, and reformatted FAT32, it is now connected to my eMac with an adaptor. Now what am I going to do with it? I could store perhaps one full-length movie. Wow, once upon a time, 4 Gb was considered a large capacity for a HD.

Holy cow that thing is huge! Man, 4gb is good for nothin' these days! You could put quite a few mp3's on it if you wanted to get the most "bang for your usage." Talk about a dinosaur!
 
Joined
Jun 13, 2008
Messages
149
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Location
Michigan
Your Mac's Specs
iPod touch 32gb first gen. MacBook, iBook G4 and a broken PowerBook G4 15"
Put Linux on it!
 
Joined
May 13, 2008
Messages
506
Reaction score
10
Points
18
Location
Edmonton, AB
Your Mac's Specs
Unibody MacBook 2.4GHz/4GB Ram/320GB HD
I'm ashamed to admit that I remember installing some of those drives when they were new!!
 
OP
hughvane
Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
3,612
Reaction score
95
Points
48
Location
Amberley, Canterbury, New Zealand
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
I'm ashamed to admit that I remember installing some of those drives when they were new!!

Yaaaaay! :D In fact, they're not all that old by comparison with things beyond the computer hardware field, they were in operation until the late 1990s, and their capacity went as far as 13 Gb, or 19 Gb (twin platter). Staggering stuff. I can't get over that exposed circuit board.

The IBM drive bay for the floppy, optical and hard drives must have made working on the machines a treat, compared with the cramped conditions inside units like the iMacs and eMacs. I mean, I'm no tech specialist, but I stripped that old IBM down to its barest essentials inside 15 minutes without breaking a thing bar the nylon motherboard clips. Anybody want a 200w dual-out switchable power supply? A cooling fan? A 64 Mb RAM stick?!
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
I remember my first hard drive... a Seagate 40 mb drive mounted on a card that popped into the ISA slot in my old Amstrad PC. Cost me $200!
 
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
Messages
2,722
Reaction score
88
Points
48
Location
Ontario, Canada
Your Mac's Specs
Custom PC
You should sell it on eBay for an absurd price, as "nostalgic PC hardware."
 
OP
hughvane
Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
3,612
Reaction score
95
Points
48
Location
Amberley, Canterbury, New Zealand
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
You should sell it on eBay for an absurd price, as "nostalgic PC hardware."

Whilst I can't use eBay from NZ, that power supply may in fact find a buyer. I regularly see 'wanted' ads for replacement power supplies, and that has a power-out socket for a monitor (not "dual-out" :Blushing: ).
 
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
25,564
Reaction score
486
Points
83
Location
Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
A 4GB drive hughvane? That was the drive in the 5500/250 Performa, Directors Special model from memory. First machine for me was an original LC which came with a hard drive, 150MB and 8MB RAM.

The 4GB drive on the 5500 was absolutely HUGE and I would never, never be able to use that amount of drive and the speed with 96MB RAM!!
 

cwa107


Retired Staff
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
27,042
Reaction score
812
Points
113
Location
Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Wait for it - a fully-functioning 4 Gb Quantum Bigfoot 5.25 hard drive Image:Quantum Bigfoot HDD.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Stripped from a really old IBM Win desktop machine, and reformatted FAT32, it is now connected to my eMac with an adaptor. Now what am I going to do with it? I could store perhaps one full-length movie. Wow, once upon a time, 4 Gb was considered a large capacity for a HD.

My first hard drive (a Quantum, in an Amiga 2000) was 50MB. That was actually quite massive for the Amiga, considering that the whole OS fit on a single density floppy.

The Bigfoot was somewhat of an anomaly in its day, as there were many drives of that size that were 3.5", Quantum just decided for some reason to develop a quarter height 5.25" formfactor drive. Even still, they were quite popular with the OEMs. I must have seen hundreds of them in older Compaqs.

What to do with it? Well, I always enjoy disassembling them and removing the magnets that move the heads. Those suckers are POWERFUL and will easily hold your kids' drawings to the fridge ;) Alternatively, you can just take off the top, attach a power supply to it and bounce coins off the platters while it's spinning (be sure to use eye protection).
 
Joined
Mar 17, 2008
Messages
6,879
Reaction score
191
Points
63
Location
Tucson, AZ
Your Mac's Specs
Way... way too many specs to list.
once upon a time? Wasn't even all that long ago :D :D :D

now I'm working in pb's. :eek:
 

dtravis7


Retired Staff
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
30,133
Reaction score
703
Points
113
Location
Modesto, Ca.
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
Agreed, it seems like just yesterday that I had my first 20MB hard drive in my Amiga 500 in a Dataflyer external case. Also had a 30GB with my Atari ST. When I first got a 120MB drive in my early 386 PC I was saying what will I do with all that room! :D

I have 2 of those Quantum Big Foots. They both still work. One is a 4GB and I think one is a 6GB or around.
 
OP
hughvane
Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
3,612
Reaction score
95
Points
48
Location
Amberley, Canterbury, New Zealand
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
What to do with it? Well, I always enjoy disassembling them and removing the magnets .(or). just take off the top, attach a power supply to it and bounce coins off the platters while it's spinning.

Why, thank you sah for your suggestions.

I work a good deal with older people (ie. older than me ;P) and their computers, and I offer to destroy their hard drives for them when their machines have 'died' or have been replaced. In this instance, with the previous owner's permission, I retained the HD just because I hate throwing away something that works.

Anyway, I have several of the powerful magnets from previous dismantled drives, not to mention several dozen small grub screws. The coin idea I will mull over for a while.
 
Joined
Jul 17, 2008
Messages
410
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Columbus, OH
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook 2.4 GHZ, 2G Ram, 160 GB HD| iPhone 4
Use it as self defense like those old sprint TV ads.
 
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
661
Reaction score
10
Points
18
Location
In a van down the river.
Your Mac's Specs
933 Mhz Powermac Quicksilver,1.5GB RAM, OSX 10.5, Tangerine 300MHz Clamshell, OS 9.2
Yeah I remember that....A GIGABYTE!?!?! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH A GIGABYTE...
heh..
heh...
1st computer I personally ever had was a Packard Bell...The thing was a 1MHz processor...hahahaha
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
Yeah I remember that....A GIGABYTE!?!?! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH A GIGABYTE...
heh..
heh...
1st computer I personally ever had was a Packard Bell...The thing was a 1MHz processor...hahahaha

Packard Bell? Ouch... that brings back reallly bad memories. Never owned one myself, but knew people who did and needed my help with them. What nightmarish things they were! I strongly suspect that if my first PC had been a PB, I would have switched to Macs loooooong ago!
 
Joined
Jun 13, 2008
Messages
149
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Location
Michigan
Your Mac's Specs
iPod touch 32gb first gen. MacBook, iBook G4 and a broken PowerBook G4 15"
Yeah I remember that....A GIGABYTE!?!?! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH A GIGABYTE...
heh..
heh...
1st computer I personally ever had was a Packard Bell...The thing was a 1MHz processor...hahahaha
Packard Bell? Nice!!
 

cwa107


Retired Staff
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
27,042
Reaction score
812
Points
113
Location
Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Yeah I remember that....A GIGABYTE!?!?! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH A GIGABYTE...
heh..
heh...
1st computer I personally ever had was a Packard Bell...The thing was a 1MHz processor...hahahaha

Probably not. Even the humble 8088 and 8086 ran at 4.77MHz. Now, if you were talking about a Commodore 64 or an Apple ][, which ran MOS 6502 CPUs, you might be right. But as far as I know, Packard Bell has always been a PC clone manufacturer.
 
Joined
May 13, 2008
Messages
506
Reaction score
10
Points
18
Location
Edmonton, AB
Your Mac's Specs
Unibody MacBook 2.4GHz/4GB Ram/320GB HD
My first computer was a Vic 20.....I wore that thing out!

My first REAL computer was a Tandy 386SX/25 with a whopping 2mb of RAM and an 80mb HD. I remember thinking that I'd never fill up an 80mb HD.

I even remember seeing a double height 5 1/4" IBM hard drive which a whopping 10mb storage capacity! If you can remember the old 5 1/4" floppy drives with the flip down drive door, that's the same size as the HD I'm thinking of.

Now I carry hundreds of times more storage in my pocket on a daily basis.
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2007
Messages
633
Reaction score
21
Points
18
Location
Stillwater, MN
Your Mac's Specs
Aluminum iMac 2.8GHz
My first PC was an 8088 with 640K ram, 5.25 floppy and 20MB Hard drive. No sound card. CGA graphics. Made by Epson. Good times playing games in white, red, blue and yellow colors.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top