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The plastics are pretty good on these in my opinion. Worst you’ll get are some stress cracks around the hinges, but the hinges actually have a very rigid internal metal frame, so it’s purely cosmetic, they will never break off. The main cause for the stress cracks on these is that the hinges...

Very good! You definitely won’t be disappointed! These are amazing laptops.

The 8000 was the very first of this series, so that’s one reason it intrigues me. It was also the first one I got and what really got me into the 8000 series, so that also makes it special to me. The 8100 is just as good obviously, and even faster. Can’t go wrong with either. The Pentium 4m...

I’d have to find something else to get rid of and keep them both! I totally get not wanting a massive, overwhelming collection, but two old IBMs isn’t unreasonable in my opinion.

I found it on this thread over at Vogons. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=44836&start=180 It is a really cool wallpaper! Probably the coolest Pentium III themed one I’ve seen. All of the Inspiron 8000 series and Latitude C800 series laptops have at least a 1400 x 1050 (SXGA+) display...

I can’t stop imagining a clueless person getting a few Voodoo 5 cards and doing this to them…

Thanks! I wore latex gloves to keep fingerprints off of the platters. They can certainly be cleaned if you accidentally smudge them though, but that can be a bit tedious so it’s best avoided. Yep, I wore latex gloves!

Yes, there is! I outlined the filter in this drive (top left). That white folded piece is the filter.

It is definitely the most in-depth hard drive repair I’ve ever attempted! These old drives aren’t nearly as sensitive to dust as newer drives are, so it’s not as much of an issue as you might think. Any dust left over will typically get blown into the air filter upon power up. The drive is...

It’s not overly brittle on mine I wouldn’t say. In fact, I would say it’s quite good for its age. The hinge mounts do like to shear off though. I had to make a somewhat crude (but permanent) fix to the hinge mounts on mine.

Hey, great to see you here! Yeah, they can be quite expensive machines! They’re extremely desirable, and for good reason. I actually managed to snag a parts system that was non working super cheap, like $60 buy it now on eBay. But the working one I bought was well over $200. Worth every penny...

Oh, I don’t know how easy that will be to replace. You would have to partially disassemble the spindle itself to get to that, which I’m not sure how to do. The index sensor is internal to the spindle.

Yeah, that would be awesome to have something like that for these old MFM drives. I’m sure they existed at one point but finding one these days would probably be damn near impossible.

The Miniscribe 3650 has a unique head setup where the top and bottom rows of heads are offset from each other, so because of this, I just removed the without doing anything special. So instead of them clamping together like heads would normally do, they just bend down slightly and nothing...

These drives are very tough, way more so than new drives. There’s obviously *some* risk of dust, but for the most part if you are careful and don’t leave the top off for too long, it will be fine. Take a look at the spindle replacement I recently performed on a Miniscribe 3650 for example...

Last chapter. Low level formatting the newly repaired drive. Dos formatting! Newly repaired drive successfully booted DOS! Wow, that was fun! It has a few bad blocks but nothing major. This is a fully usable drive now. Sorry for multiple posts, I can only attach 10 photos per post so I...

And here are pics of the recipient drive. Recipient drive before disassembly. (That Ontrack data recovery sticker is awesome. Definitely leaving that intact!) Recipient drive with cover removed. Heads and platters removed from recipient drive. Bad spindle liberated from recipient drive...

I managed to pull this off. I successfully replaced the bad spindle motor in a Miniscribe 3650! I had a lot of fun with this, and seeing an old Miniscribe come back to life warms my heart. I got a really nice looking Miniscribe 3650 for cheap on eBay but when I first plugged it in, it didn’t...

The Toshiba T3200 (non SX) and T5100 have EGA plasma. They are AC-only units though, so they don’t run on batteries, so if you want a battery powered machine they may not be for you.

This is my thoughts exactly. Like I said, I’m not interrogating everyone person that buys things from me, that would be rude and unacceptable. I’ve only asked THIS particular seller questions because they seem like they really don’t know what they are doing, and that WILL become my problem when...