Scored a working HD20 for $45.

[krye]

I scored a working HD20 for $45. Not bad considering they're pretty scarce in working order and they usually go for $100+ on eBay. My 128K and 512k are on the blink, so I had to try it on my Plus.



It works like a charm. It's loaded with games, apps, and files too. I copied everything over to a Zip disk and sneaker netted it over to my 10.5 Mac. So I have a nice backup of everything in case I decide to just wipe it.

It's pretty yellow. It's too bad it's going to rain tomorrow, or I'd take it outside for a retr0brite session.

 

[bibilit]

Not bad, and nice story about those files on your Blog.

When i get my own SE, hidden somewhere, was a small text file. The file says "Farewell little Macintosh,hope your next owner will be kind"

I found another file with some clues about the first owner (was a lady, teacher, and living in Paris not far from home...unfortunately she had moved and was not able to locate her) :-/

 

[krye]

Cool.

I dug a little more and it seems that one of her parents was a doctor. There's tons of medical stuff on here. Also, the girl studied over seas in Saudi Arabia. There's a letter to a friend that says "I don't know if mom and dad are sending me to the states to go to high school or not". So this person might not even be in the US. There's another letter that was written in Nov 1993 that says "I turned 14 last week". So that means she's 33 now. She also mentioned her siblings names.

I punched her name into peoplesmart.com and found a match in Michigan. Same age, and "possibly related to...." shows one of the names she listed as a sibling.

Hopefully I can get an email that I can contact her at.

 

[uniserver]

i must admit its kind of interesting acquiring a computer loaded up with personal stuff, i'm only about 30% of the way through my last 89 machine haul, i'm finding Educational CD's in the drives, and files, word/excel docs, dirty pictures, all kinds of tidbits, one of the 500mhz 2nd gen's was totally customized with sound pack theme, iTunes loaded up with mp3's, its also funny how unique ones mp3 lib is.

 

[uniserver]

one quick question, how fast would you say the HD20 is? Almost like booting a computer from a 100mb SCSI zip drive?

thats how i boot my plus.

 

[krye]

It's definitely slower than SCSI.

 

[uniserver]

yes but Booting from the 100 mb scsi zip drive is'nt exactly what i would call fast.

 

[Scott Baret]

I always wipe drives when I sell machines and promptly wipe any drive on a machine I get, but sometimes there are other telltale signs as to who owned the computers.

I got two Macs three years ago with identifying stickers on them. Both were from a university where I had done a pre-college instrumental music program. The conductor of the concert band had owned the IIci and the former conductor of the professional level River City Brass Band had owned the SE. Pretty cool to know whose they were, especially since I know one personally and know several former members of RCBB, including the guy I took trombone from for nearly eight years. (Yes, I still play).

 

[krye]

I found the girl online. (Amazing/scary what you can dig up with a few google searches.) But I don't have an email address. I got in touch with the eBay seller. He said he bought the HD20 from the girl's family back in 2000. He never really used it so he never wiped it clean. I asked him if he still had contact with the family and if he has an email address. We'll see.

 

[Scott Baret]

Yeah, you can find pretty much anyone's info online if you know the sites to use and they haven't gone and made themselves transparent. Everyone thinks only the people on CSI can do it but believe me, average Joes like ourselves are capable of almost anything with a few keystrokes. Try it on yourself sometime if you don't think you're transparent enough.

 

[trag]

yes but Booting from the 100 mb scsi zip drive is'nt exactly what i would call fast.

I timed external SCSI Zip drives back in the 90s and found them to be almost exactly the same speed as a floppy disk on a PC, IIRC. So they really weren't any faster than using a floppy, but they held a lot more, and you got all that unreliability as a special bonus. ;-)

 

[LOOM]

Maybe I missed this somewhere, but why are you contacting her/them?

There's tons of medical stuff on here.

Please take backup of this, a lot of this old "business" software are lost because this software are never sold on the open market.

 

[krye]

Not apps, not that I saw. The guy had word docs and spread sheets of medical notes and stuff. (Nothing patient confidential.)

 

[fairchild]

yes but Booting from the 100 mb scsi zip drive is'nt exactly what i would call fast.

I timed external SCSI Zip drives back in the 90s and found them to be almost exactly the same speed as a floppy disk on a PC, IIRC. So they really weren't any faster than using a floppy, but they held a lot more, and you got all that unreliability as a special bonus. ;-)

I don't know about the zip drives, but the jazz drives i have are blazingly fast compared to floppies! Maybe a limitation of the zip drive, not the scsi bus.