@sumudu Sidekick and I have a ritual every anniversary that involves lighting our unity candle and drinking the best champagne we can get our hands on. She seldom finishes one pipette and it ends with, "That cost a fortune. I'd hate to pour it down the drain.". Leaving me to have to finish off the entire bottle.
@matigo I do have a Ethernet adaptor and associated DOS drivers but it is PCI. I was using it to do that app.net DOS client.
I have the subsystem to the point than DNS, FTP and TELNET work.
But man oh man…what a trial talking a guy through getting that up and running over the phone.
@matigo I am now kicking myself a little because last year, I threw out all of the floppies we had in stock along with the Travan tapes. They were just sitting in the storeroom under a mountain of dust.
@matigo If his computer is old enough to have children of it's own, how old do you suppose those floppies are?
@matigo It's likely s Seagate 4096 then. There were a few full height 80MB drives but that one was really popular for a while. Then it became very unpopular for the previously outlined reasons :)
The worst MFM hard drive was made for the original IBM-AT. A company called Lapine. Almost every single drive self destructed.
The third worst to memory was the Quantum Bigfoot drives. As a Compaq certified repair person, I made a small fortune replacing those under warranty.
// @10centuries
@matigo How? It's only links to the outside world are a DB9 serial port and a parallel printer port. It is a ISA motherboard so good luck finding a Ethernet adaptor (and associated DOS drivers) with a twisted pair connector (or a passive BNC hub with twisted pair that could tie into their network)
@matigo If the 80MB in question is a Segate ST-4096 full height, a fair amount as most of those developed "marbles and gerbils in a blender syndrome"
The head actuator would go ape and fling the heads all over the place thus making a racket that sounded just like gerbils and marbles in a blender. Then it became a heavy paperweight. I still have a functional one in an attic in WV
// @10centuries
The gateway laptop idea is looking like a bust because I cannot find a working power supply…yet. Also, I will have to employ a lot of duct tape as the front battery it cannot function without keeps shooting out of it like a mortar because the retaining clip is broken.
I have a Compaq LTE-5000 that would do the trick but I am NOT sending a collector's item with an irreplaceable hard drive across the country. Not going to happen.
I may have to build up a small, mini-tower DOS/Win98 system at the office and send that instead. I think I have an old ASUS motherboard and all the trimmings that will do the job. I have a mountain of cases and power supplies.
Just means he'll ultimately pay more for the shipping back and forth.
@10centuries Awesome! Cool stuff I will never have time to delve into because people do their bookkeeping on systems with MFM drives and have my phone number!