What is this?

[Jordanwb]

Yesterday I picked up two computers out of the garbage to see what I could get out of them. One had a 2.8 Ghz P4 which I could use in another computer (free upgrade. Woot!), the other had this:

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/8879/img0165fo.th.jpg (http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/8879/img0165fo.jpg)

I know what it does: it houses an IDE drive, but where is it used? I thought IDE drives weren't hot swappable.

[cariboo]

IDE drives aren't hot swappable, the idea behind those driver cartridges, was that you could move the drive between different computers. These were more prevalent before every computer had usb ports.

[Gizenshya]

It is a device that converts any regular IDE drive into a hot-swappable drive.

What makes drives hot-swappable is two-fold: 1. Having a software-based way to unmount it, to stop data corruption, and 2. To have a way to disconnect the drive safely, once unmounted, without damaging the drive (electrically or mechanically). So no reboot required.

Devices like that take care of the second part, since most OS's can support unmounting nowadays.

You can have many of those inner cases with drives in them (or many drives to put in one single inner case) as you want, and that larger outer case is installed in the case and attached to the MOBO much like a CD-ROM drive.

edit: after reading cariboo907's post, I should clarify. What he said was the original intention and use of the drives. And after a closer look, it is older than I originally thought. What I said works as well, but you must remember that you don't want to move the drive until it is done spinning, if you want to hot-swap one. But who knows if whatever mobo hookups it has will work on a modern desktop mobo.

[Jordanwb]

I see. Thanks. ):P

[judge jankum]

Oh noooooo he got to the dumpster before I did!!!!!LOL!!!!!!
This machine I'm on now and 4 others I have are built from spare parts, some of which I even found on the side of the road...The hard drive in this one is an 80gig I grabbed from a garbage.LOL!!!

[Jordanwb]

Nice. One pc I pulled out of the garbage had only the mobo, no processor, RAM or anything. I got a stick of RAM, bought a dual core processor, stuck a hard drive in it, slapped Ubuntu 9.04 amd64 and it ran like a dream. All for $75 CAD. The mobo has a Geforce 6800 on it, which isn't too shabby.

[judge jankum]

There's nothing like slapping a bunch of old junk parts together and watching it come to life!!! Well except for the occasional blue smoke LOL!!!

[Hwæt]

Nice. One pc I pulled out of the garbage had only the mobo, no processor, RAM or anything. I got a stick of RAM, bought a dual core processor, stuck a hard drive in it, slapped Ubuntu 9.04 amd64 and it ran like a dream. All for $75 CAD. The mobo has a Geforce 6800 on it, which isn't too shabby.

O_o

Where on Earth did you get an AMD64 dual-core processor for under $80 USD?

[lisati]

There's nothing like slapping a bunch of old junk parts together and watching it come to life!!! Well except for the occasional blue smoke LOL!!!

:) I had a Z80-based machine that died in a smelly puff of blue smoke!
And my first experience of putting a website live on the net from one of my own machines was on a 10+ year old machine that I'd managed to get running a CLI version of Ubuntu 6.06. Now to un-bork the installation of Dapper and try to figure out a dist upgrade from the command line to see if I can get a newer version of Ubuntu to work on it but that's another story!

[judge jankum]

I got one on a cracked mobo at a thrift store for 9 bucks.....I don't have a mobo for it yet, and it may not be any good but was cheap

[judge jankum]

:) I had a Z80-based machine that died in a smelly puff of blue smoke!
And my first experience of putting a website live on the net from one of my own machines was on a 10+ year old machine that I'd managed to get running a CLI version of Ubuntu 6.06. Now to un-bork the installation of Dapper and try to figure out a dist upgrade from the command line to see if I can get a newer version of Ubuntu to work on it but that's another story!

If I have to do much with a command line I'm going down hard and fast LOL!!!

[lisati]

If I have to do much with a command line I'm going down hard and fast LOL!!!

My old machine can't cope with a GUI on Ubuntu, not enough RAM. So far 6.06 is the only version I've managed to get running on it - some of the newer releases won't even install from CD, not even in CLI mode.

[judge jankum]

I guess I was with Windows too long, I stay with the aps I can get through synaptic..Point and click lol...

[Exodist]

Yesterday I picked up two computers out of the garbage to see what I could get out of them. One had a 2.8 Ghz P4 which I could use in another computer (free upgrade. Woot!), the other had this:

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/8879/img0165fo.th.jpg (http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/8879/img0165fo.jpg)

I know what it does: it houses an IDE drive, but where is it used? I thought IDE drives weren't hot swappable.

Usage behind it wasnt to be hot swappable, it prob even took drivers befor the PC could see it. But it looks like a old style large serial housing, could be external SCSI. Hard to tell from here. Prob SCSI now that I look at it more. Drive used in it prob was around 120MB to 500MB. Good old metal enclosure when you actually bought something that would last!

[Khakilang]

The person who throw away the computer must be a Window user. Thinking it is already obsolete and couldn't run Window 7 just threw it away. Anyway good for you.