When 20MB just isn't enough... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 11:25:02 am
content: Gee we take things for granted these days. I was tinkering with an old computer that I have in my collection this evening when suddenly I got the dreaded "Insufficient Disk Space" error message. Upon checking, I had 75KB free out of 20MB (yes, Megabytes).After installing DOS, a few drivers, a few basic applications, my hard disk was almost full.Time to off-load as much as I can onto the network drive and run it from there.(Screenshot attached for those who are too young for MS-DOS. 2.6MB free! Woo!)

author: Rmx77
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 11:44:09 am
content: i remember having that issue back on an old apple macintosh preforma 631cd that had a 500mb hard drive and that was just mostly enough for the os and programs and if you wanted anything else just hope and pray it was small enough to fit there like a floppy disk or few floppies in size or else the file may be to large and would warn you that you may not have enough space to boot the machine.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 11:50:22 am
content: DoubleSpace helped with that in the old days. Used to get 40 Meg out of 20 Meg hard drives.

author: 0b01010011
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 11:55:31 am
content: Quickly rewritten and then rebranded DriveSpace in v6.22 after patent stuff from STAC I think

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 12:07:44 pm
content: The decadence, you even have an ethernet card! Do you also buy a new Rolls when the ashtray is full?An NE1000 card back then would cost about $500 or so. I remember those damn AUI modules that would randomly fall off, or it would break the connector when you accidentally pushed the pc against the wall...

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 12:10:55 pm
content: Quote from: rollatorwieltje on June 24, 2015, 12:07:44 pmWhat's this NE1000 garbage. NE2000 all the way :-)Haha yes, I added a network card to this IBM PS/2 I have. I knew I wasn't going to fit everything on the hard disk so at least I can boot off the disk (floppy if I have to) and run applications off the network.It's actuallythis cardfrom my original thread,here.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 02:09:50 pm
content: DEBUGG=C800:5Isn't it strange how some things stay in your mind foreverThe last time I ran that was when I replaced a 5MB hard drive with a 10 MB hard drive on my first PC.Note:DO NOTrun this command unless you want to lose everything on your DOS PC, it performs a low-level format on the hard drive.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 03:03:05 pm
content: Stacker was the business back then. I used it to double my 32 meg drive. It was like magic.I worked with a old school computer sales man. Back in the day they (Wang) could upgrade their mainframes drive from 10 to 20 meg. It just required a couple of jumper changes. When a technician was sent to do the upgrade he was under strict instructions to take all day. At the time you could buy a decent house for cost of the 'upgrade'.

author: Sigmoid
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 03:30:42 pm
content: Quote from: Towger on June 24, 2015, 03:03:05 pmHm I also started out on a 20MB drive, but I never got Stacker or Drivespace... Looking at how on my quadcore, 2.4GHz i7, using an optimized drive compression scheme gives me 10% to %25 more capacity at most, I really wonder how those old drive compression software did in reality. Even as a kid I was like "Double? WTF! That has gotta be a scam."

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 03:34:11 pm
content: It depended on the type and size of files. It certainly gave an extra 40-60% more drive space.

author: Sigmoid
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 03:48:00 pm
content: Quote from: Towger on June 24, 2015, 03:34:11 pmYea I guess nowadays most data is already compressed one way or another... Back then it was all plaintext, and inefficient binary structures with huge wastelands of zeroes.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 04:32:03 pm
content: My first hard drive use RLL (run length limited) to drive the head so I had a whooping 30MB on the same platter as your average 20MB drive

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 05:09:12 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on June 24, 2015, 12:10:55 pmModel 30, my first PCAlso had the 20MB drive. If you want to laugh you should look up the specs of that drive, it has the access time of a jukeboxThe bigger drives were significantly faster.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 05:57:02 pm
content: DOS 6?! Pretty dang newfangled operating system, mister!Real men use DOS 3.3. Networks are for sissies who can't fling 5 1/4" floppies far enough.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 06:17:25 pm
content: Installing novell ver 2 on a 6mhz 286 server from 5 1/4 disks....

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 06:24:47 pm
content: DOS 3.3 + Windows (WfWG3.11) will fit on a 20MB drive. I've got it running in a VM as I type this. However it does need more disk space if you want to add any useful applications.

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 06:50:47 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on June 24, 2015, 06:24:47 pmOnly if our big spender bought the ram upgrade, I think Windows needs at least a megabyte. This machine came with only 512k as standard.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 07:10:17 pm
content: Windows on top of DOS was never useful. Get rid of that and it'll be a computer worth using.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 08:54:16 pm
content: As I recall you cold modify the memory size and use the unclaimed memory between the system memory and the display frame buffer and reach up to 704K, probably doesn't seem much but that's a 10% memory increase.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 10:17:03 pm
content: My old WfWG3.11 PC was actually a genuine IBM AT, 286 CPU with640K512Kon the motherboard and 4MB on an Intel AboveBoard AT memory expansion card populated with 256Kx1bit DIP chips, with half on the AboveBoard itself and half on a daughter card for it. It was quite usable with MSWord, Excel etc.I later rebuilt an old DOS luggable with an early 386SX motherboard and the same AboveBoard after I'd upgraded the IBM AT. That was a bit of a waltzing bear as although it could run WfWG, the built in Hercules monitor didn't do it any favoursThe IBM AT ended up rebuilt with a 486DX2-66 board and 8MB RAM and was a Win95 workhorse till the early 2000's.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 11:07:53 pm
content: For those interested in specs, the machine I have is the PS/2 Model 30 8530-E21.CPU:Intel 286 @ 10MHz (I have tricked this up and installed the optional 287 10MHz maths co-processor)Hard Disk:20MBFloppy Disk:3.5" 1.44MBMemory:1MBExpansion Bus:16-bit ISAIt's partially apart on my desk at the moment but here are some photos as well. The real time clock has been replaced with a brand new Dallas DS12887+.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 12:21:04 am
content: Nasty, but at least it isn't MCA. If you need a DOS box with a fairly slow bus to run old ISA instrumentation or control cards, I suppose its worth keeping.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 12:54:14 pm
content: Quote from: LabSpokane on June 24, 2015, 05:57:02 pmNah, 5 1/4" are also for sissies, 8" floppies and MFM hard drives!Edit: even better, using stacks of magnetic discs for storage! Go big or go home!

author: Melt-O-Tronic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 01:02:58 pm
content: Quote from: Sigmoid on June 24, 2015, 03:48:00 pm<cough> . . . XML . . . <cough>

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 07:32:11 pm
content: Quote from: GreyWoolfe on June 25, 2015, 12:54:14 pmDoes it help that I still have that whole big red box of manuals as well, along with the disks.........I even still have both the whole 4.6G Seagate ( a swap when the original 1G drive did a slow seek when hot fail, so was RMA'd under warranty) with the little jumper set to force it to be a 1G drive, as that version of Netware ran out of fingers, thumbs and toes if it was over 1G and would barf and corrupt your data.The days when you could do a backup of the entire server to a 650M CDROM disk, and I had the 2X HP external writer with it's high speed EPP connection. 10 years later and those weekly backups were readable till I did data erasure with the microwave oven.....

author: georges80
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 07:58:14 pm
content: And here I was ecstatic to have purchased a 10M IMI 5 1/4" hard drive with controller for about $2k way back when. Wrote the 'drivers' to interface it to my home brew 8088 computer running cpm86. This was all so I could develop a cross assembler/linker/librarian for then very impressive National Semi 16032 processor.The best thing was I soon after came to work in the US and found a 40M drive for about $200 (from a friend 'in the business') AND a mate back in Perth managed to sell the $2k IMI for $2k to a small company that wanted a backup for their drive. It was the first and last time I ever 'broke even' with a piece of computer hardware technologyThis is back in the mid 80's.cheers,george.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 08:15:03 pm
content: Before I went IBM PC, I had a fully tricked out 68K systemIt was originally a Sinclair QL but that was too slow compiling C programs fromMicrodrive(Sinclair's 100K/cartridge endless loop tape drive) so over the years it got upgraded with a 24MHz 68020, 4MB RAM, 3.2MB floppy drives, a 40MB hard drive, a mouse and a GUI + the development environment for it and a 1200/75 modem I used to get onto FidoNet via a local BBS.Then I switched to a QXL 68EC040 card running a compatible OS and the same software inside the upgraded IBM AT.How many here can still read a 5.25" floppy and move the files to the macine they are browsing from without having to open any cases or get out any LapLink cables?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 11:45:23 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on June 25, 2015, 08:15:03 pmI can put my hand up to that. I've got about 4 or 5 5.25" drives floating around of various type. A few are installed in machines, others just sit in a parts box.I mostly use them to write disks for my Amstrad PC1512DD and Apple IIe.

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2015, 08:06:41 am
content: i have an old laptop here with 1gb hdd and its running windows 98se and i thought that computer had low hdd space

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2015, 11:13:25 pm
content: My first x86 pc had dos 2.1 in rom (Tandy 1000 HX)