Author Topic: A Stupid Computer Question  (Read 1350 times)

lee n. field

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2021, 03:38:59 PM »
Yeah, might be. Maybe late 90s? Though I know that around 1998 I went to Gateway instead of buying computer show no name laptops.

My recollection is, early 90s, 91, 92  the typical drive in a desktop PC was an 80MB, 120MB or 160MB, in there somewhere.  Capacity mounted up rapidly.  Mid decade sometime you started to see the first 1GB drives.  Laptop drives lagged a bit.

Something like this will let you try to read it. 
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Ben

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #26 on: October 15, 2021, 03:49:07 PM »
Something like this will let you try to read it.

Thanks. I'll have to see if I have an old IDE cable here or can additionally order one on Amazon, because it looks from the picture that the IDE port is too fat. Or from the other side of the equation, the pins on this drive are right up almost against the drive housing. I'm gonna need a pretty skinny connector, I think, to hook things up.
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lee n. field

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #27 on: October 15, 2021, 04:51:38 PM »
Thanks. I'll have to see if I have an old IDE cable here or can additionally order one on Amazon, because it looks from the picture that the IDE port is too fat. Or from the other side of the equation, the pins on this drive are right up almost against the drive housing. I'm gonna need a pretty skinny connector, I think, to hook things up.

Laptops used a smaller connector.  Regular to laptop drive adapters are around, or were.  Your problem will be finding a computer with an IDE interface to plug it into.
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RocketMan

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #28 on: October 15, 2021, 04:56:13 PM »
Thanks. I'll have to see if I have an old IDE cable here or can additionally order one on Amazon, because it looks from the picture that the IDE port is too fat. Or from the other side of the equation, the pins on this drive are right up almost against the drive housing. I'm gonna need a pretty skinny connector, I think, to hook things up.

You'll need an adapter to get from the 2.5 inch laptop hard drive parallel connector to the 3.5 inch full size hard drive connector.  Something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Kinamax-ADP-IDE23-2-5-Inch-3-5-Inch-Converter/dp/B000HJBEUY/ref=sr_1_41?dchild=1&keywords=ide+connector+adapter&qid=1634330655&sr=8-41

Or you could go laptop PATA to regular SATA like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Convert-Laptop-Drive-Serial/dp/B07Z5ZQNWP/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=2.5+pata+to+sata+adapter&qid=1634330916&s=electronics&sr=1-4
A caveat is that I know nothing about this particular brand.  There are Sabrent and Startech versions of this adapter out there.  Those two are decent brands.

The best thing to do might be to get one of these as it works with both 2.5 inch laptop and 3.5 inch full size drives, whether they are PATA or SATA.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB-SATA-IDE-Adapter/dp/B00D76J1KO/ref=sr_1_9?crid=2QTBEW2HQJQIO&dchild=1&keywords=sata%2Fpata%2Fide+drive+to+usb+2.0+adapter&qid=1634331129&refinements=p_89%3ACable+Matters%7CSABRENT%7CStarTech&rnid=2528832011&s=electronics&sprefix=usb+pata+to+sata+adapter%2Celectronics%2C223&sr=1-9
Lots of flexibility with one of these and they usually work pretty well.  I have three or four of them around from my computer biz days.
(They are about ten bucks more since I last bought one.  I wonder if that's due to supply chain issues or just inflation in general.)
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Jim147

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #29 on: October 15, 2021, 08:40:56 PM »
Do you really want to play that old Tetris game that bad?

I have it on 5 1/4 floppy if you need it.
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HeroHog

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #30 on: October 16, 2021, 04:00:27 PM »
There are adapters that let you read a lot of the old stuff and they are CHEAP. I have a few.
https://www.amazon.com/Generic-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B01J7MWD4M/
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JTHunter

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Re: A Stupid Computer Question
« Reply #31 on: October 19, 2021, 12:57:59 AM »
A variation of Tetris called "Stacker Blocks 3D" is available here.

http://stacker-blocks.sourceforge.net/

Here's an online Tetris.

https://www.freetetris.org/game.php
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