David Brown wrote
Do you mean that computers using such old disks are not in use in critical systems,
No, I didnt mean that.
or that it is not a problem because such disks are easily available?
I didnt mean that either.
I meant that if there is a system which needs a replacement
hard drive, it doesnt have to be exactly that drive, any other
drive of the same technology, MFM/RLL/EDSI. and the same
size can be used and that there are plenty of those around
so that they wont be paying dearly for it.
The only situation where it might be the only approach possible
is where the logic card has failed on an identical drive that has
data on it that is irreplaceable, but thats very very unlikely with
a drive as obscure as that particular one.
You can be very sure that for any given age of computer, there /will/
be systems out there of that age, that are important to some infrastructure.
But they wont have to have that particular drive, any drive of the
same technology and size will be fine if the original has died.
There are a great number of factories that have ancient machines as part of their production or testing systems.
But they wont have to have that particular drive, any drive of the
same technology and size will be fine if the original has died.
Many of these have peculiar hardware that will only work with these
machines, and in many cases there is little or no documentation and
the original developers have long since retired.
But they wont have to have that particular drive, any drive of the
same technology and size will be fine if the original has died.
It can be worth a /lot/ of money to the owners to keep these machines going, and people are willing to pay for spare
parts.
Yes, but there are plenty of drives of that size and technology around.
The challenge, of course, is to connect the customer with the seller in these rare circumstances.
Nope, because they can use almost any drive of the same
technology and size if the system has been designed so
crudely that the replacement drive has to be of the same sise.
It is not that long ago when I heard from a potential customer who needed a replacement CGI monitor for such as
system.
Any of the older multisynch monitors will work fine in that situation.
It was infeasible to replace the system with a new machine - so if necessary they would pay us to develop a CGI to VGA
converter card (we found them an existing converter card).
And you could have used one of the older multisych monitors
or any GCI monitor.
So I fully expect there will be people out there who have use of such a hard disk,
Yes.
and are willing to pay plenty of money for one.
Nope, because any drive of the same technology and size will work fine.
Whether there is someone looking for one now, and whether it is worth the effort trying to find such rare buyers, is
another question.
Nope, we know that plenty are offering drives of the same technology and
size so we know that no one with a clue will pay much for one of those drives.
