EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => Buy/Sell/Wanted => Topic started by: legacy on July 21, 2018, 03:38:42 pm
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Some early CD-ROM and CD Writer drives used a mechanism where CDs had to be inserted into special cartridges or caddies to protect the disc from damage. It was cool, but it did not gain wide acceptance among disc manufacturers. Drives that used the caddy format required "bare" discs to be placed into a caddy before use, making them less convenient to use. Drives that worked this way were referred to as caddy drives or caddy load(ing), but from about 1994 most computer manufacturers moved to tray-loading, or slot-loading drives.
I'm looking for an SCSI CD Writer drive with caddy-loading mechanism. The read/write speed doesn't really matter, any drive with at least 1x speed (300150Kbyte/sec) is OK!
The following models are known to use the caddy-loading mechanism
- Yamaha CDR102
- Plextor PX-R412Ci
let me know if you have for sale :D
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Some drives which used caddies also allowed bare disks to be used.
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I'm looking for an SCSI CD Writer drive with caddy-loading mechanism. The read/write speed doesn't really matter, any drive with at least 1x speed (300Kbyte/sec) is OK!
1x speed is 150KB/sec.
I checked my old stock and no caddy load.
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I need the caddy mechanism :popcorn:
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I've been on the lookout for one of these drives for many years and haven't found one so far. Let me know how you go!
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can you tell us why do you need caddy mechanism ? is it for an special project ???
Seen your model for an ridiculous 999$ usd on ebay wow
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The one I have is actually a DVD-RAM drive which has a tray and can use either bare disks or a caddie set in the deep tray; it is PATA though. I think the only SCSI CD/DVD drive that I have is my ancient Nakamichi 4 disk changer which only reads CD; at the time, only SCSI drives could reliably read audio CDs digitally.
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I'm looking for an SCSI CD Writer drive with caddy-loading mechanism. The read/write speed doesn't really matter, any drive with at least 1x speed (300150Kbyte/sec) is OK!
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IIRC, my i486 50MHz PC, sitting in storage, has a caddy-type, single-ended SCSI, optical drive. But I can't swear that it's RW (instead of RO). The PC also has a SCSI Exabyte tape drive, and an Adaptec SCSI host controller.
I'll check the optical drive and post an update.
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I still have a caddy type Plextor reader in my stash of stuff I've held onto but no writers. By the time writers came down to where they started to get affordable, the caddy style had fallen out of favor.
The caddies were nice in theory, they protected the discs and made them easier to handle. The problem is that caddies were expensive so most people had only one, which kind of defeated the purpose. The idea was that you'd have a caddy for each disc and keep them in there.
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I still have a caddy type Plextor reader in my stash of stuff I've held onto but no writers. By the time writers came down to where they started to get affordable, the caddy style had fallen out of favor.
The caddies were nice in theory, they protected the discs and made them easier to handle. The problem is that caddies were expensive so most people had only one, which kind of defeated the purpose. The idea was that you'd have a caddy for each disc and keep them in there.
Yes, I used to keep various Linux distro CDs in their own caddies (which I still should have).
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I had one in a bunch of ancient tech I had been hoarding for many years - but a streak of conscientiousness brushed by me about 4 years ago and I had a cleanup. :-[
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That's why I have so much old "junk" around, practically every time I throw away something worthless I end up regretting it later when everyone else has thrown theirs out too and they're suddenly very rare.
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I'm looking for an SCSI CD Writer drive with caddy-loading mechanism. The read/write speed doesn't really matter, any drive with at least 1x speed (300150Kbyte/sec) is OK!
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I'll check the optical drive and post an update.
False alarm. I have an NEC MultiSpin 3X CD-ROM Reader.
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That's why I have so much old "junk" around, practically every time I throw away something worthless I end up regretting it later when everyone else has thrown theirs out too and they're suddenly very rare.
me too. But usually, people are not willing to pay for this stuff, this it makes no sense unless YOU need some of these old "junk".
I am not a collector, the caddy is for a project.
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I had one of those at one time. Whether I still have it and whether I can find it is another matter. If nobody else has one I could start looking.
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My interests rotate and often I get interested in something I have set aside for years. Also prices do increase down the road when there is not much of something left. To some degree there is value in historical preservation as well.
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To some degree there is value in historical preservation as well.
yup, the pricing psychology must have a theory(1) on its feet, but the value in historical preservation is not what I see from my experiences on eBay :D
people have recently offered *** 10 Euro *** for a perfectly preserved in aesthetical and working conditions board by Motorola that is also very rare to be found with a gold cap MC68882@50Mhz FPU installed, original manuals, software (with license), and hw-debugger :palm: :palm: :palm:
people have also offered *** 50 Euro *** (I am not kidding, I still have their PMs) for a for a perfectly preserved in aesthetical and working conditions SGI workstation Indigo2 with a very hard to preserve gfx aka Maximum Impact with 4Mbyte of texture ram :palm: :palm: :palm:
usually, in my experiences, people have shown a different pricing psychology; I mean they feel they can pay for a vintage Car, motorcycle, an old house, an old van ... vintage guitar, vintage trousers, even for a pair of vintage shoes, but not for vintage computers: this, they have decided, must be of the same order of money they pay for a couple of beers :-//
edit:
(1) something like "an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it"
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Well you can't blame people for making lowball offers. I think I sold an Indigo2 for $40 a few years ago, I needed to make some space and was happy just to get it into a home. Some vintage computer stuff goes for crazy amounts of money, some is cheaper. Personally I prefer it when prices are lower, it's more fun to buy/sell/trade hobby stuff when there isn't a ton of money tied up in it. I don't need to get rich from my hobbies, I just like playing with old stuff. Occasionally you get someone who thinks their old stuff is made of solid gold, no shortage of greedy people on ebay.
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Well you can't blame people for making lowball offers.
This is rather offensive for the effort you put at the activity. Your time and effort have a value, especially for those who are not recyclers and don't want to smash stuff.
You say * I wanted to make some space * ok, but for the same purpose, if am I am offered 10 euro, I am really tempted to save my effort and time by smashing the board, rather than spending time at testing, repairing and restoring the electronic, cleaning and polishing the plastic, documenting everything, and giving sort of assistance to "customers".
on eBay I listed the board for 100 euro + s/h, giving people the possibility to negotiate for a discount. I sold two of these items with -30% off (70 euro), and with -50% off (50 euro) at Xmas.
And that's fine, but * offering 10 euro *?!? WTF, it's -90% discount and the get off price must have a minimal border below the which you are really looking like Santa Claus.
Companies like Newark have always listed the board for a starting price of 400 euro (+ VAT), without giving software (opensource + customizations), neither assistance.
Personally, I prefer it when prices are lower, it's more fun to buy/sell/trade hobby stuff when there isn't a ton of money tied up in it. I don't need to get rich from my hobbies
a ton of money? Have you ever contacted companies like wildfiresystems (https://wildfiresystems.com)? they offer refurbished HP and SUN workstations, with warranty, assistance, and professional packaging. I do too.
Look at their price list: an HP C3750/8Gbyte ram/2x80Gbyte HD is listed for 1600 euro + VAT + S/H, whereas I have always offered it for 500 euro (VAT already included) + S/H with the same specs.
And I have recently got two ridiculous offers in the range ~ 50..100 euro :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
This opens the doors to the bad attitudes like what happened on the marketplace of a forum like Nekochan where guys usually want an O2+ for 100 euro + S/H, cause this must be the range of budget to be allocated for their hobby.
I refused since those activities were my second core business done honestly for a living, and the workstation we are talking about was a restored R12K@400Mhz/1Gbyte ram/and DCD kit (extremely rare to be found in working conditions); it had cost me a lot of time, effort, and money, thus, in order to avoid a negative gain, I was expecting a minimal offer of 500 Euro, but one of those guys was so * brilliant * (sarcasm) that he thought hardware must be given away for cheap, thus for his concept of "fair price" when he saw my offer on eBay he informed the mod of Nekochan that there were two offers of the same item in two different places: eBay and Nekochan. Now, on Nekochan you can't include software for their policy, which was respected by the announcement on their forum, whereas on eBay I was offering the workstation with the hard drive loaded with the software I found installed in the machine when I picked up it from a company.
and I am talking about Autodesk's, so ... do you know what happened? Do you guess how it ended?
mr brilliant must have informed eBay(1) cause I one day later I got an alarming message about a suspicious software found in one of my auctions, and eBay reacted suspending my account for verification. Someone must have told it was warez. It was not, but this story ended with the cost of two weeks of suspension, 122 euro paid to a third party company to provide a written proof the software was not warez, and a lot of time wasted.
(1) eBay confirmed they got informed by someone, but they can't reveal who was the source due to the privacy policy. Do you want to know whom you have to thank? You need to quote them in a court case. No thanks.
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iirc didn't some of the early mac towers use the caddy system and they would of been scsi - I may have something but on ther other hand it could be a internal zip drive
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I have a HP 9600 external SCSI CD writer, you can dismount it, the internal is a 5.25 CDROM, but, I do not find where is it now, sure in my stock house.
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A little bit of info, sony made bare scsi recorders (caddy) for oem (inc apple) back in the mid to late 90's, one of the many brands was smart storage solutions
Edit. Sony CDU921S, Sony CDU526R, Logitec LCW-7408/M
my memory is a bit foggy but i will do some more digging
also around the time of the Amiga A600 come out there where also external pcmcia drives iirc these where 50 pin scsi recorders with caddies in a external case
As above there now "vintage" and seem to command a premium
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This is rather offensive for the effort you put at the activity. Your time and effort have a value, especially for those who are not recyclers and don't want to smash stuff.
You say * I wanted to make some space * ok, but for the same purpose, if am I am offered 10 euro, I am really tempted to save my effort and time by smashing the board, rather than spending time at testing, repairing and restoring the electronic, cleaning and polishing the plastic, documenting everything, and giving sort of assistance to "customers".
on eBay I listed the board for 100 euro + s/h, giving people the possibility to negotiate for a discount. I sold two of these items with -30% off (70 euro), and with -50% off (50 euro) at Xmas.
And that's fine, but * offering 10 euro *?!? WTF, it's -90% discount and the get off price must have a minimal border below the which you are really looking like Santa Claus.
Companies like Newark have always listed the board for a starting price of 400 euro (+ VAT), without giving software (opensource + customizations), neither assistance.
Personally, I prefer it when prices are lower, it's more fun to buy/sell/trade hobby stuff when there isn't a ton of money tied up in it. I don't need to get rich from my hobbies
a ton of money? Have you ever contacted companies like wildfiresystems (https://wildfiresystems.com)? they offer refurbished HP and SUN workstations, with warranty, assistance, and professional packaging. I do too.
Look at their price list: an HP C3750/8Gbyte ram/2x80Gbyte HD is listed for 1600 euro + VAT + S/H, whereas I have always offered it for 500 euro (VAT already included) + S/H with the same specs.
And I have recently got two ridiculous offers in the range ~ 50..100 euro :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
This opens the doors to the bad attitudes like what happened on the marketplace of a forum like Nekochan where guys usually want an O2+ for 100 euro + S/H, cause this must be the range of budget to be allocated for their hobby.
I refused since those activities were my second core business done honestly for a living, and the workstation we are talking about was a restored R12K@400Mhz/1Gbyte ram/and DCD kit (extremely rare to be found in working conditions); it had cost me a lot of time, effort, and money, thus, in order to avoid a negative gain, I was expecting a minimal offer of 500 Euro, but one of those guys was so * brilliant * (sarcasm) that he thought hardware must be given away for cheap, thus for his concept of "fair price" when he saw my offer on eBay he informed the mod of Nekochan that there were two offers of the same item in two different places: eBay and Nekochan. Now, on Nekochan you can't include software for their policy, which was respected by the announcement on their forum, whereas on eBay I was offering the workstation with the hard drive loaded with the software I found installed in the machine when I picked up it from a company.
and I am talking about Autodesk's, so ... do you know what happened? Do you guess how it ended?
mr brilliant must have informed eBay(1) cause I one day later I got an alarming message about a suspicious software found in one of my auctions, and eBay reacted suspending my account for verification. Someone must have told it was warez. It was not, but this story ended with the cost of two weeks of suspension, 122 euro paid to a third party company to provide a written proof the software was not warez, and a lot of time wasted.
(1) eBay confirmed they got informed by someone, but they can't reveal who was the source due to the privacy policy. Do you want to know whom you have to thank? You need to quote them in a court case. No thanks.
You seem to be too easily offended. There's a very simple solution to offers that are not worth the effort you put into the stuff, ignore them, or use the auto-decline feature, very simple. If you sell stuff you are going to get a few lowball offers, that's just life, they happen because sometimes they work. I have put in lowball offers on items before and had the seller accept, sometimes they have no idea what something is worth and price it way too high, sometimes they are desperate to get rid of it, sometimes they accept my offer, sometimes they decline. Either way no big deal. You would rather smash something than give it to someone too cheap, which I would consider being a jerk. I would rather lose money on something and have it go to somebody who will do something with it rather than have it just get recycled into scrap.
You put a lot of effort into fixing stuff up for sale, I put the effort into fixing stuff up for me. If I sell something it's often as-is, or I've had my fun and I want something else. Sure if you go to a company that specializes in selling refurbished Sun or SGI stuff the prices will be high, so what? That's irrelevant to the hobby market. I never paid more than $25 for an old workstation and at one point I had a stack 4 feet high of Sun and SGI boxes, most of them I got for free. I tried to give away a Sun Sparc 20 to a good home and had no takers, it's still in my closet. I have a Sparc IPC that originally cost $13k currently acting as a book-end on a shelf. This stuff isn't (or wasn't) worth much, eventually when most of it is gone it may be worth more but there is a point where prices bottom out. No big deal, I paid little or nothing for it and had it just to play with, I don't expect it to be worth a lot. I would never try to earn a living refurbishing old stuff and selling it, it's just too easy to end up with a bunch of stuff that isn't worth much.
I have no idea about the software, most of my workstations were obtained without hard drives or with nothing of interest on them. It's so easy to find just about any software online that I never worried about it and never had any problems.
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You would rather smash something than give it to someone too cheap, which I would consider being a jerk
I consider dorks those who insist at insisting on obtaining stuff for free, and when you say "no", they try to revenge. That is what happened on eBay due to this attitude.
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so what? That's irrelevant to the hobby market
The consequence of this is the new attitude of putting tons of junk on eBay :palm: :palm: :palm:
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It's so easy to find just about any software online that I never worried about it and never had any problems.
yeah, like this (http://www.downthebunker.xyz/wonderland/reloaded/bazaar/viewtopic.php?f=33&p=335&sid=04a50e32389e889bb0cbe4103d176a5f#p335) :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
In theory companies don't care at all about someone downloading abandonware software these days, because it's only worth spending money on legal enforcement for software if it still has commercial value, otherwise, a company is paying for legal enforcement despite there being no possible financial gain for the company, and that's a waste.
There's a guy on eBay who's been selling SCSI disks with tons of IRIX software installed on them for at least the last 10 years, probably longer, and SGI never tried to squash people who were passing around the Hax Force licenses either.
However, in our directly bad experience with companies like Autodesk and Adobe, we know they are a different story, and during these days we have been threatened with legal action by a few private dudes out of this site, and the risk of them causing issue is real.
Yesterday the team discussed the possibility of sharing our archives with the policy of promising to promptly remove any software/links if a complaint is made is probably the right one, we asked an attorney who practices and studies law as our personal counselor and she showed some points where we the odds of being driven into troubles by some of the biggest jerks off the site.
We don't make money on this, and nobody likes to be sued for a hobby, so it is all tightened up: to drop this project completely and without reserve.
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Which country are you in? Because I work with vintage synthesisers I have a lot of old SCSI optical drives, they come in handy as I regularly need to recover data for customers and to test 1980’s samplers. Some of them have caddies. I am not sure how many caddies I have as I don’t have to use that drive type often, the drawer type usually suffices unless it’s the Emulator II “Unverse of Sounds” disks that work in the rack mount custom drive that was sold back then but I think I have a couple of beige Yamaha drives that use caddies. I will need to check when I get to my workshop whether I have enough to spare one. I have had to keep working SCSI CD/DVD, Zip, Jaz, Syquest and magneto-optical drives available as bands sometimes turn-up wanting to recover their data from their old touring rigs when they decide to return to the spotlight.
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Which country are you in?
Italy
I have had to keep working SCSI CD/DVD, Zip, Jaz, Syquest and magneto-optical drives available as bands sometimes turn-up wanting to recover their data from their old touring rigs when they decide to return to the spotlight.
yup, it's a problem nowadays.
What is your experience with magneto-optical drives?
are MO-drivers reliable?
are MO-medias reliable?
and what about DVD-ram's?
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Which country are you in?
Italy
I have had to keep working SCSI CD/DVD, Zip, Jaz, Syquest and magneto-optical drives available as bands sometimes turn-up wanting to recover their data from their old touring rigs when they decide to return to the spotlight.
yup, it's a problem nowadays.
What is your experience with magneto-optical drives?
are MO-drivers reliable?
are MO-medias reliable?
and what about DVD-ram's?
It’s been a long time since I used DVD RAM, it was a versatile format compared to DVD-RW. MO drives and media have held out well enough, I don’t know about drivers though as I use them with samplers from the same era so I don’t attempt to use them with computers. Mostly these days the jobs that I have are along the lines of getting the data off old drives and onto new CD or DVD media for archiving and also putting it onto SCSI SD card drives. Also with regards the CD/DVD caddies there were the more common version with the sliding shutter and the version with no shutter. Which are to looking for?
As for Syquests it’s touch-and-go, they are really grumpy by now and the less we talk about Zip and Jaz drives the better.
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Vintage! Rare! >:D I have this CD reader with caddy (maybe with caddies):
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As for Syquests it’s touch-and-go, they are really grumpy by now and the less we talk about Zip and Jaz drives the better.
Jeez, I saved all those in the dustbin, a long, long time ago.
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I am interested in the structure and electrical properties of the Ge2Sb2Te5-based thin film used in DVD-ram disks to permanently retain the information: what I haven't understood yet is the stability of this solution, in term of reliability.
MO's uses a completely different technology.
Prices are also completely different:
- SCSI DVD-RAM brand new unit, listed for 150-200 euro, cartridges (disk + caddy), are qty=5 for 20 euro
- SCSI MO 9.1GB brand new unit, listed for 500-600 euro, MO r/w disks of 4.5Gbyte are 50 euro each
Also with regards the CD/DVD caddies there were the more common version with the sliding shutter and the version with no shutter. Which are to looking for?
I am looking for the easiest mechanical solution ever: without shutter: you put the CD into the caddy, and you put the caddy into the CDRW unit.
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Vintage! Rare! >:D I have this CD reader with caddy (ies?):
yeah, this one, with caddy :D
but I need a writable unit, in order to run my experiments on chalcogenide film materials used for laser optical memory effect. The idea was discovered in 1968, even if it was implemented several years later. Anyway the "laser memory" of CDs is the easiest implementation of the "ovonic memory"; DVDs add more complexity and even the theory is more complex.
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Well I did post some information on the first page - seemingly it was over looked
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@bob225: I don't think Apple ever made a CD writer with caddy.
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It was a rare option in some countries the oem is Sony - Sony made some scsi cd-r (caddy) drives around the same period - just following breadcrumbs from old memories
tbh I remember putting this sort of stuff in the skip in the early 2000's along with bbc micros/masters it was just junk back then
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Are we sure caddy type CD burners were even made? I've been digging in my memory and I'm pretty sure the earliest burners I remember seeing were tray types. I've had several caddy style readers but I don't think I've ever had a burner. It seems likely they did exist but I'm not personally aware of any and they certainly were not common.
Maybe look at archives of magazines like Byte and Macworld from the mid 90s? There seems to be surprisingly little info out there on this specific topic.
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Are we sure caddy type CD burners were even made?
Yes, it seems:
The following models are known to use the caddy-loading mechanism
- Yamaha CDR102
- Plextor PX-R412Ci
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I can 100% confirm that Yamaha CDR102 is a CD writer with caddy because I happened to use it during my university course. I can't confirm the Plextor model, never seen/used in person, I have only read on the internet during a research.
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As per my previous post, Sony CDU921S, Sony CDU526R, Logitec LCW-7408/M
Sony CDU948S is the bare drive
Manual.
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/158812/Sony-Cdu948s.html?page=4#manual (https://www.manualslib.com/manual/158812/Sony-Cdu948s.html?page=4#manual)
Edit. Found a Plextor - https://www.amazon.com/CD-R-DRIVE-PLEXWRITER-PLEXTOR-PX-R412Ci/dp/B00B872ZTS (https://www.amazon.com/CD-R-DRIVE-PLEXWRITER-PLEXTOR-PX-R412Ci/dp/B00B872ZTS)
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i remember using cd caddies with burners, i had one when i had my SGI Indy, they seemed to be more prevalent on the CD-R drives with trays on the read only drives. I also used one a lot where i used to work.
anyway, i don't have any of the caddy drives myself now but i can keep an eye out in a couple of places, one might turn up.
If you are desperate you could email Ian at SGI Depot and see if he has a spare drive: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html (http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html) There would have been plenty supplied with many of the SGI systems as i am sure you know.
As for pricing and selling stuff on ebay you do have to expect low offers, especially on unusual items. You have to realise when your selling something old/unusual/rare you will have a tiny market to sell to... there could only be one or two people in the world looking for that item when your selling it, and it's those buyers who will determine the price your item will sell at. This is regardless of how much time and effort you have put into it or how much you think it's worth.
and to answer this question by Legacy:
What is your experience with magneto-optical drives?
are MO-drivers reliable?
are MO-medias reliable?
IME MO drives and media are extremely reliable, i have 2.6gb and 5.2gb MO drives here made by Sony and they always work, even with media written 20+ years ago. The recording method means they are very insensitive to their environment. Requiring two things to be true to alter the contents (heat and a magnetic field).
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Ian at SGI Depot
Thanks for the hint, but I don't want to have anything to deal with such a person.
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This is regardless of how much time and effort you have put into it or how much you think it's worth.
Mainly *yes*, but this concept doesn't apply to vintage cars and motorcycles. I have been doing business for 12 years in vintage motors, and I can assure this marketplace is completely different due to the psychology of customers, e.g. they are happy to pay for fresh paint, and for cleaned metal, as well as for a restored saddle of the motorbike, whereas on vintage computers ... people don't want to pay a penny for such a service, they prefer pickup junk.
It is my second core business since I have a genetic disease on my eyes, that reduces the amount of time I can spend on a screen, consequently, my main core business as computer science consultant is a part-time business, not enough to pay the food, the rent, etc. Thus, when I am not paid to travel (for remote customers assistance), I do the restoration, and I sell stuff for the fairest price possible, that implies a decent gain.
As for pricing and selling stuff on ebay you do have to expect low offers, especially on unusual items
The best business I saw on the vintage computer was an auction with a super rare Commodore C65, offered in perfect conditions: the auction ended with 85.000 Euro
(for me, it was a shock)
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Mainly *yes*, but this concept doesn't apply to vintage cars and motorcycles. I have been doing business for 12 years in vintage motors, and I can assure this marketplace is completely different due to the psychology of customers, e.g. they are happy to pay for fresh paint, and for cleaned metal, as well as for a restored saddle of the motorbike, whereas on vintage computers ... people don't want to pay a penny for such a service, they prefer pickup junk.
well i do know a bit about the automotive world being a bit of a petrolhead myself and have owned vintage (30 year) old collectable cars. It's a very different market, there are far more people out there with an interest in vintage cars than vintage computers, it's a bigger marketplace and it's very easy for a collector to enjoy their cars on the roads of today which can't be said for vintage computers.
This in a way makes me think of my DPB-7001 quantel paintbox (video painting system) i have been slowly trying to get working for the last couple of years, it's unbelievably rare, was crazy expensive when it was new, changed the way tv looked, it's historically important (IMO!) and only a few were privileged enough to use one in the 1980s... sounds like it should be worth a fortune? No, it won't be worth much at all when it's restored because hardly anyone knows they even exist. Sometimes we have to do something as a personal goal and expect nothing in return.
I would say if you want something to restore and potentially make money from i'd head towards restoring vintage video games, consoles, arcades and maybe more popular computers from the likes of atari and commodore the vintage and retro gaming scene is growing fast
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restoring vintage video games, consoles
Yup, four months ago, I did a bit of money by restoring a few NeoGeo cabinets (Motorola m68k driven), those used in video games' rooms :D
Enough money to repay the costs, the petrol to bring parts home, to pay for the paint and glue used to restore the wood, and the purchase of an original CRT plus my time to repair the video circuit board, to clean up and refurbish the motherboard by replacing capacitors and this stuff; I even restored the coins box, and It ended with a decent gain to pay for the rent and for food shopping for half the month.
Shipped to a gentleman in Piccadilly Circus, London, UK. I have never seen again a customer like him: he paid in advance a third of the money for services, he didn't complain about the wooden crates used to safely ship the NeoGeo-cabinets, not even if wooden crates add more shipping costs than a common parcel with a lower probability of damages during shipping. It was ok for him, and he promptly paid the rest the next day he received the goods via bank money transfer. This saved me to pay Paypal's commision (6% of the value).
WOW! It was the best deal ever :D :D :D
Whereas ... with vintage computers on eBay... I usually receive requests for low-cost shipping methods, whose carriers must be cheaper than UPS and FedEx, and with PayPal I am responsible for everything, including a damages that only happen due to a poor shipping service, and thanks to the new Paypal's policy, in these case you have to refund the payment + all the S/H cost, thus, in order to avoid to end with a strong negative gain, I have already subscribed a commercial insurance with a credit company, whose commision is the 10% of the insured value.
Reasons why I can't accept 50 euro for a workstation. But probably I will retire the whole business of refurbished UNIX Workstations from eBay, and I will only offer vintage consoles.
Anyway, I have recently opened this (http://www.downthebunker.xyz/) website, and I am working in my free time on a new enhanced version, that will look like a mini version of eBay, except we don't charge costs or commission on trades, neither we take money from advertising services :D
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Just for kicks, I checked and my tray loading IDE DVD-RAM drive which uses a caddy is a Hitachi GF-2000.
Now that I think of it, my first CD writer was a slot loading Ricoh which used a caddy also.
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Just been for a look as I know I have some Yamaha CDR102's somewhere as I swapped them for caddyless SCSI versions of the Yamaha drives for ease of use.
I am in the midst of sorting through stuff so do you want me to let you know if I find one (they should be fully operational as they were working when replaced)
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Not all of the vintage car market is like that. I'm a huge fan of vintage (70s-80s) European cars and for the most part those are worth squat. I have far more invested in my Volvo turbo wagon than I could ever hope to sell it for, but that's ok because I absolutely love that car and would never think of selling it. Cars are a different market overall than vintage tech though, they have a *vastly* wider appeal. I would bet the number of people interested in classic cars probably outnumbers the people interested in vintage computers by 10,000:1 or more. Drive up in a restored '57 Chevy and you're going to attract a crowd, even amongst people with no particular interest in cars. Get out your Altair or Commodore 64 and if there are any hardcore geeks or tech hipsters around you'll get their attention, but you're not gonna draw a crowd.
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I am in the midst of sorting through stuff so do you want me to let you know if I find one (they should be fully operational as they were working when replaced)
so kind, thanks :D
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Not all of the vintage car market is like that
yup, but Ford Racing is the best for that :D
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Drive up in a restored '57 Chevy and you're going to attract a crowd, even amongst people with no particular interest in cars. Get out your Altair or Commodore 64 and if there are any hardcore geeks or tech hipsters around you'll get their attention, but you're not gonna draw a crowd.
yes, if you have ever take a ticker for the CCC (Computer Chaos Campus) then you know that's the Holy Truth, since even when the public scene is composed by tech hipsters of every kind (hackers rather than enthusiasts), the most of them are more attracted by motor show (that is a subset of pure entertainment in the kind of event) rather than talks on vintage computing, but being the public of CCC composed by tech hipsters than the 99% of them is attracted by the hacking camp with all the events about modern technology, and people like me, restorers, are called "the low-tech", pretty ignored by the mass.
next time I will take a ticker for CCC, I will give them a few talks about bitcoins, mining, and how to crack a detachable lock hanging by a pivoted hook on the object fastened, rather than how to polish plastic and metal for a perfect restoration :D
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and with PayPal I am responsible for everything, including a damages that only happen due to a poor shipping service
What's wrong with that? You packed the stuff for shipping, you contract with the shipper to ship. The buyer doesn't take control until it is on his doorstep, so you can't pass off your faulty packing on him if there is shipping damage. This is how the normal business world works, at least here: any damage up until the point the buyer receives it is the senders problem (because only the sender can claim compensation from the shipper). If you're not happy with buyers wanting a cheap uninsured drop-kicked delivery, don't offer to send it via one.
Y'know, the impression I got from your posts is that you think you have a right to make a profit on whatever you choose to do business in. It doesn't work like that. You have a right to offer stuff for sale, but it's up to buyers whether your price is worth it to them. (Apparently) derisory offers aren't meant to be offensive, just a statement of what your stuff is worth to that buyer. Don't treat it as a personal affront; it is just business.
This saved me to pay Paypal's commision (6% of the value).
See, you're not averse to being offensive yourself when it suits you. That commission pays for buyer and seller protection insurance, which you benefit from when it's your turn. You are doing exactly what you accuse those buyers that want cheaper-than-USPS shipping of doing.
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next time I will take a ticker for CCC, I will give them a few talks about bitcoins, mining, and how to crack a detachable lock hanging by a pivoted hook on the object fastened, rather than how to polish plastic and metal for a perfect restoration :D
I polish plastic and metal for a perfect restoration *for me* because I enjoy restoring stuff and having nice examples of vintage tech to play with and show off to my other geek friends. I don't even pretend it will be worth it from a business perspective. I enjoy restoring vintage gear and preserving it, it doesn't have to have profit potential.
A couple years ago I cleaned up and de-yellowed a tired old Wyse dumb terminal and then paid ~$80 for a brand new CRT to replace the very tired one that was in it. It's cool, I now have a very nice vintage terminal to play with, but would I make a profit if I ever tried to sell it? Highly unlikely, even if I value my labor at $0. It's ok though, I didn't do it to profit, I did it for myself and there are far less interesting ways to blow 80 bucks and a couple of afternoons.
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What's wrong with that?
it's wrong that
- customers on eBay are not willing to pay for insurance, but they claim to Paypal to have the money back if something goes wrong during shipping ---> workaround to fix it: you have to force them to pay the insurance by increasing the selling price up to the 10% in order to cover the insurance cost
- customers are not willing to pay for a serious shipping service, e.g. UPS, Fedex, etc, and they want shitty cheap services that are prone to lost/damage the parcel, and you have to refund ---> workaround to fix it: drop the whole auction, money back, relist it on eBay, and ban the user if he/she insists on getting good via cheap shipping
With shitty shipping services like Ecoparcel the failure rate is like 4 parcels lost/damaged every 10 you ship: too bad business with them!
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See, you're not averse to being offensive yourself when it suits you. That commission pays for buyer and seller protection insurance, which you benefit from when it's your turn. You are doing exactly what you accuse those buyers that want cheaper-than-USPS shipping of doing.
I already offer the warranty and assistance on everything I sell, and eBay already takes my money (up to the 10% of value) even if they provide zero assistance when something goes wrong.
You know you have to pay eBay even when you don't sell anything? It's costly at the end of the year.
Let me tell two years ago I sold a RISC-workstation, the customer had persuaded me to use Ecoparcel for the shipping method, and the parcel got lost (rather than stolen property, I have the suspect), and I was not covered by any insurance to save the customer to pay the cost.
My big mistake. What do you think it happened with eBay?
I had to refund the whole commission via Paypal due to their protection program, my account was blocked for 4 days, this caused a lot of problems with my balance since my account was linked to a bank account, and phoning/emailing to eBay was completely futile since the only reply I got was: they wanted me to pay their commissions.
Thus, 430 euro of goods and S/H gone lost, plus 41.50 euro to eBay for their commissions, it means I was off by 471.50 euro.
Who has ever helped or protected me? eBay doesn't consider the case when the parcel is lost/damaged, they want their money, they don't listen to your reasons, neither they accept a delay for your refund, you are obliged to pay immediately, this is the irritating point, they block your account, thus even your pending business (aka money that you are waiting from customers) is blocked, and if you have the account linked to a bank, this is alarming since they can access to your money in a very irritating.
Usually, in real business, payments are issued with 60 days of time, whereas eBay via Paypal immediately blocks the bank, and this might cause problems.
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This is how the normal business world works
Have you ever bought something from companies like Newark? Moates? They don't offer PayPal as the payment method, they only accept bank money transfer, and they don't ship anything if you don't subscribe an insurance and accept FedEx costs.
They are not willing to give you money back if something goes wrong with the shipping, they readdress the problem to a third party company that *might* refound withing 20 days.
Mr Ian at sgidepot.co.uk doesn't sell on eBay, and he doesn't accept Paypal unless you send the money via "send money to friend/family" that means
- you can't claim money back, not even if the parcel is lost
- you pay commissions (the 5%..10% of the value, it depends if it's international or national payment)
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but would I make a profit if I ever tried to sell it?
it sounds like you haven't yet understood I need to do it for a living.
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What's wrong with that?
it's wrong that
- customers on eBay are not willing to pay for insurance, but they claim to Paypal to have the money back if something goes wrong during shipping ---> workaround to fix it: you have to force them to pay the insurance by increasing the selling price up to the 10% in order to cover the insurance cost
- customers are not willing to pay for a serious shipping service, e.g. UPS, Fedex, etc, and they want shitty cheap services that are prone to lost/damage the parcel, and you have to refund ---> workaround to fix it: drop the whole auction, money back, relist it on eBay, and ban the user if he/she insists on getting good via cheap shipping
With shitty shipping services like Ecoparcel the failure rate is like 4 parcels lost/damaged every 10 you ship: too bad business with them!
i totally get where your coming from but you can't force a customer into something they don't want.
To be honest i think ebay is not the right platform for selling restored vintage hardware due to the fragile nature of old systems. They can work one day and blow up the next, they are often big & heavy and are a massive PITA to ship.
i sold a quantel paintbox to a guy in Oregon a few months back, shipping was $150 by UPS and that was without insurance, then the video output card crapped out shortly after it arrived |O. Thankfully he's been really good about it, probably because he works with vintage hardware and knows how temperamental it can be. I am just waiting to hear if the replacement i sent to him has fixed it. It also took many emails before the deal to work out exactly what he needed and what i could help with, i bet it can be hard to do that when someone just hits the BiN button and expects everything to be perfect like it was a new product.
i said before, i think you should put your skills into something else that is more profitable and doesn't require you to ship large fragile computers around the world
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i totally get where your coming from but you can't force a customer into something they don't want.
if they don't want to pay for insurance they don't have to insist on getting stuff. It's simple, but people usually insist on their reasons to persuade you.
To be honest I think eBay is not the right platform for selling restored vintage hardware due to the fragile nature of old systems. They can work one day and blow up the next, they are often big & heavy and are a massive PITA to ship.
eBay is just platform, an occasion to meet, and it worked until new customers injected a distorted view of the business, whose solution was readdressed by eBay into new ridiculous protection program that forces you to refund money without any protection for the seller, plus their ridiculous form that forces people to offer shitty shipping services.
It's not what you see from respectable serious companies like Newark and Moates.
Have you noted that a lot of sellers are no more selling on eBay?
i said before, i think you should put your skills into something else that is more profitable and doesn't require you to ship large fragile computers around the world
Out of eBay, I do usually ship glass laser tubes for label cutting, they are even more fragile than computers, nobody has ever complained about UPS's cost, neither for wood box used to ship the equipment: it's eBay that is too mentally ill with the bad attitude of promoting junk for free.
See what ANS replied to my email when I contacted them via eBay
I have a 90S which is a RD matted to the 7732. This unit is new however the metal case does have some small scratches on it. I will let you have it for $600.00 USD + $100 USD S/H, under these conditions and terms:
Sold As Is
No returns
Your responsible for custom / import fees
Insurance is mandatory if the payment not via bank money transfer
Let me know if you want this unit, if so then I will fully QA Test this unit?
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I said before, I think you should put your skills into something else that is more profitable and doesn't require you to ship large fragile computers around the world
(http://93.55.217.0/wonderland/chunk_of/user/ivelegacy/parcel/sgi-ip28-parcel3.jpg)
(SGI Indigo2/Impact Workstation, professionally repainted, maxed out
loaded with tons of software, fully restored, offered with DOA warranty
and shipped inside a by a wood enforced box)
like this? or do you want to see a bigger and heavier one? :D
I have a 50Kg IBM S/360's hard drive shipped to Brazil into a wood box
anyway, I am no more putting new stuff, I am just selling what is still in the warehouse :popcorn:
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You know you have to pay eBay even when you don't sell anything?
So if you don't make a profit, Ebay can take back the electricity and data services you've already consumed, the wages from the web monkeys and dev teams, the data center rentals, etc?
Maybe I am misunderstanding and you're actually running your own tat bazaar so not really using anything Ebay provides. Somehow, I don't think so.
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but would I make a profit if I ever tried to sell it?
it sounds like you haven't yet understood I need to do it for a living.
We all need to do something for a living, but not everything is a viable means of support. I couldn't reasonably support myself by selling vintage hardware, so I do something else for a living. Your needs have no relation to what the customers want/expect. If the customer is not willing to pay for shipping insurance then you should not sell to them, simple as that. No sense in complaining about it around here. Things like lowball offers and customers who want ridiculously cheap shipping are simple facts of life when one is trying to sell things. If you can't deal with such things then find some other way to make a buck because those are things you are going to encounter.
When I put in an offer on something that has a "Best Offer" link, I don't care what the seller thinks the item is worth, I don't care how much profit they need to make, I don't care what they have invested in it, my offer is just that, an offer, it's what I'm willing to pay. If it's less than what they feel they need to get for the item then they can counter-offer, or they can decline, either one is fine with me. If it were an item that I absolutely had to have I would have just paid full price.
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You know you have to pay eBay even when you don't sell anything?
So if you don't make a profit, eBay can take back the electricity and data services you've already consumed, the wages from the web monkeys and dev teams, the data center rentals, etc?
eBay already takes a lot of money from adverting :palm: :palm: :palm:
and since eBay has a responsibility at persuading your customers to refuse professional shipping services, then they shouldn't force you to pay the commissions when the parcel got damaged/lost since in this case, your gain is already negative
what I complain is that commissions must be paid ONLY when your gain is positive, so commissions make sense.
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I don't care what the seller thinks the item is worth, I don't care how much profit they need to make, I don't care what they have invested in it, my offer is just that
Precisely. You don't care.
and individuals like you have ruined eBay :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
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Precisely. You don't care.
Individuals like you have ruined eBay :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
Please explain why I should care, and why people like me have ruined ebay? I'm curious to know what great hardships it has caused you to get lowball offers, and what extreme and exhausting measures you must take to decline these offers. I'm having a hard time understanding this because I sell stuff on ebay now and then, and I occasionally get lowball offers and it has never even occurred to me to get my knickers in a twist about it, if their offer is less than I'm willing to accept I simply decline, it's very, very easy. In fact I can even set it up so that ebay auto-declines and I never even see these offers. Perhaps you should consider seeking psychological help? You seem to take it very personally whenever someone else doesn't value your possessions as greatly as you do.
You know what would stop me from making lowball offers on items? If all sellers stopped accepting them, but on the contrary I find they are accepted surprisingly often, so please give me a compelling reason why I should stop or even feel the slightest bit bad about doing so?
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Please explain why I should care, and why people like me have ruined ebay? I'm curious to know what great hardships it has caused you to get lowball offers
you are very irritating by insisting on what you believe it's your right without the minimal cognitive perception to others :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
I have a "buy-it-now", followed by a "make an offer", eBay wants more money if you add a trigger to the minimal value you can automatically accept, thus I am not using the trigger, and if the wanted price is 100 USD, people like you are prone to offer less than 10 USD (or less than 10% of the value) simply because they don't care.
They insist, they insist, they insist, ..... and that is so irritating and offensive, and you don't care, and you assume it's right :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
And the sad line is that with jerks like those it's always a pole in the ass for honest people like me; you are not prone to listen to us, because you don't care, thus it ends you make us stop our services on eBay since they are not worth the effort.
You are the kind who first makes a ridiculous offer, then wants shitty service, and then claims to Paypal to have the money back, and eBay, to encourage people like you, that has become the most of the new users, has offered its negative contribute by modifying the policy into ... a set of a crazy ruleset that doesn't protect the seller, and promotes low-cost shipping service
as consequence eBay has already become a dump full of junk and garbage, for those who only want to ruins the scene and doesn't want to pay any more than a penny.
And for what? People like you only want to stack tons of low-cost stuff in their garage, like if stacking stones was a new status symbol to express your value as a human being.
What have you ever done with retro computers? Nothing? I believe you have only stacked stones to show your value on Facebook by taking pics of what you own by offering less than 1 penny to who does it for a living.
If you don't recognize the value of who works behind the artwork, you are worth exactly what you offer :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
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Guys, stop this discussion, it's just futile.
Back the topic, I won't follow this topic, it has become obnoxious, thus feel free to contact me by PM if you have a CDROM writer with the caddy for sale.
Thanks.