Ping: Ben Myers

"Ben Myers" wrote in message
...
Kevin Childers wrote:
"William R. Walsh" wrote in message
...
Hi!

My suspicion is that the Compaq SSF has a BIOS limit
of 132GB, another in the long parade of hard-coded
BIOS limitations this industry has seen, starting
with 528MB on 386/486 systems.
It seems inline with any other system of the time. A notable exception
is my Dell Precision Workstation 220 "toy". The 2002 A13 BIOS on that
machine has 48-bit LBA support...the BIOS can see and utilize all
200GB of the second installed hard disk. (Funny that my newer Latitude
D800 doesn't have 48-bit LBA support in the BIOS...)

I actually still have a couple of the Compaq P3 SSF
systems here.
I've come into probably seven now, and of those, at least two went out
after being refurbished and provided with XP Home. They're plenty good
enough for a "second computer" or something for kids to goof around
on.

I love the ones I have, although recently I've found the Evo D500, a
Pentium 4 Deskpro with a black/silver case and only minor internal
changes.

AFAIK, Compaq is the only name-brand mfr that imposed
on its hard drive vendors to limit the capacity of
a drive at the factory.
Interestingly, when I had my Contura 410C laptop, they kept sending it
back with bigger and bigger drives each time it smoked one. (It had a
tendency to blow up the Quantum Daytona 2.5" drives, so one day it
came back with a Seagate Marathon 420MB drive. That one blew up too,
so it came back with an IBM 720MB drive. The IBM drive survives today
in a PS/2 L40SX laptop.)

I guess they couldn't boss the 2.5" drive makers around in the same
way, or maybe they treated the machine differently because it was in
the hands of a "mere mortal" who didn't contract with them in any
special way.

I'm with you on Maxtors. Every so often, I gather out
5 or 6 and sell them quickly on eBay. I don't even
want to give them to my enemies.
Same here, although I have held on to a very few as they have worked
properly. I don't know what miracle is keeping them alive, and I
haven't checked too closely. Seagate Data Recovery Services (!!!) of
Canada actually bought a Maxtor drive from me on eBay...

I was curious, so I asked them why they wanted it. Amazingly enough,
they needed it for parts to recover a drive someone had sent them.

William

And if you look at what they or anyone else charges for such services,
you find that you grossly under priced the drive when you sold it.

Regularly doing a species of computer repair myself, I see no harm in
someone making a good buck by paying pennies for the hardware needed to do
a repair and charging substantially for very specialized know-how and
potentially expensive procedures... Ben Myers

Oh, I see no harm in it at all. Just commenting how one man's dross is
another's gold. If I had only known back in 1970 that value of an antique
auto, I doubt I would have given away that Ford Edsil, station wagon, with
under 50,000 miles on it. As is I lost no money in the deal, it was a.
"Just get the darn thing out of the back lot" deal to begin with. Gave it
some one who needed it far more than I did at the time. Beside it would
never earned it's keep by helping me to impress girls, as a station wagons
rarely does.