Date   : Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:18:25 +0000
From   : zeem.uk@... (Alex Taylor)
Subject: Help! [ot]

2009/11/11 Anders Carlsson <anders.carlsson@...>:
> Alex Taylor wrote:
>
>> The problem may have been a duff hard drive
>
> Oh, I forgot to mention our webcam server was a 486DX/2-66 running on
> some second hand IDE drive, probably around 200 MB or something like
> that.

I once built a similarly-specced machine, using a cardboard box that
once contained bell peppers as a case. I played around with a
small-footprint Linux on it. One day I took it out of the garage to
find the damp air had exacerbated the effect of the leaking NiCad
battery, destroying the motherboard.

I've got machines with 20MB MFM drives that still seem to work, even
after running a bad-sector scan in a loop for hours on end. But on the
opposite side, I've found the likes of the 60MB Conner drivers as
fitted to many Acorn A3020s, which all seem to suffer exactly the same
failure, even when they've been sat unused in storage. Working fine
when put away, completely dead when brought out a few years later.

-- 
Alex Taylor