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Two hard drives...what to make?

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mannye

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I have the following from two hard drives (old IDE)

From the first one I have the motor, the bearing from the arm, the magnet and the board. The second HD is intact. So I assume I will be able to scavenge the same things from that one.

Is there any way to slow down the motors to say, 33 1/3 RPM or 78 RPM? I assume these are stepper motors?

Otherwise I'll just pull up the stir plate threads and get one of those made. The motors are high RPM and low torque I assume.
 

mannye

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Seems pretty easy. I have no desire to make bad speakers out of dead hard drives...lol I like the clock. Bt I think I prefer the stir plate idea. I also think that if I get creative with reduction gears, I may be able to make a turntable for 78s or even 16RPM records which I have a bunch of, but nowhere to play them.
 

EJM3

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You need some serious reduction, most hard drives spin at 5,400 RPM, but they do have some torque to them as they have to start all those platters in motion. They differ, but I may be able to pull up torque values on the drive of your choice...
 

joemirando

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I'm going to have to find those SCSI drives. There was a time when I had external drives all over the place. They used to keep the computer room toasty warm. I'm talkin' the bad old dark ages of personal computing here. A SCSI drive was the envy of every geek in the area. And these puppies were the loudest of them all. I had to custom-build housings and jury-rig power supplies for them. I can only imagine the magnets inside these things.

But even better, picture the magnet(s) in THIS puppy! If I remember correctly, it was a rip-roarin' 5 Megabyte monster!

1.jpg



Hell, you could drive a stir plate for a VAT with that thing. ;)

Now where did I put those old drives?

Joe
 

mannye

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Amazing how crazy expensive those hard drives were. I remember Apple computers were expensive because they used SCSI. It was twice as much as an ide drive.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.
 

joemirando

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Amazing how crazy expensive those hard drives were. I remember Apple computers were expensive because they used SCSI. It was twice as much as an ide drive.

And almost three times as fast. My first hard drive was 60 Meg and cost me almost $700 (It required an interface to convert SCSI to the company's stripped down version). I had a friend who owned a computer store, so I ordered through him. He told me I was insane. "NO ONE is ever going to use sixty megabytes of storage!"

Muahahahahahahaha!

And Apple computers have always been more expensive because they were Apples. Gateway used to doctor hard drive interfaces so that you'd have to buy from them, but their prices never got to what Apple's were.
 
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Midnight Sun

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Seems pretty easy. I have no desire to make bad speakers out of dead hard drives...lol I like the clock. Bt I think I prefer the stir plate idea. I also think that if I get creative with reduction gears, I may be able to make a turntable for 78s or even 16RPM records which I have a bunch of, but nowhere to play them.

OK, I get it. Not cool enough for you. How about singing tesla coils? Click here.

Once you build a big enough tesla coil you can do really cool things like this.
 

mannye

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Meh. Lol.

Actually it's not that I'm poopooing the speaker thing just that I want to end up with something that's more useful or decorative. Like a clock that's both or a stir plate.

I'm always reluctant to throw away things that are so well made. The precision parts inside a drive are like little works of art.

Hmmmm. If I had more of them I would make a mobile.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.
 

Midnight Sun

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I think tesla coils from two old hard drives would be an awesome project. Midnight, do you have any plans we could see? :p
Top secret!

OK, I'll admit that my tesla coil plans got lost shortly after I graduated from the university. :( Life got in the way of making a new plan set and actually building one.

Anyway some of the more experienced builders will add a rotating spark gap in place of the traditional spark gap. Supposedly gives a more consistent discharge from the secondary. Could use the HD motors for that component but might need to reduce the speed down a bit.

The mobile idea is a neat one too. There are 5-6 dead HD around my office, might have to borrow them and make some decorative art for my work space.
 

EJM3

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Kind of reminds me of the RL02 we used in class. Even had a VAX 11/750 in school. But my favorite home computer was my good old PDP 11/23 with the RL02 packs. I actually ended up teaching one of the classes on UNIX/LINUX for a couple semesters. Ah! The good old days of 440 3 phase hookups!

My first real HD for a PC was a 20MB MFM back lost in the 80's...

So much fun with computers in my past! But all of them lent tons of parts, and those big old drives had some HUGE clonker magnets in them! Really mess up your fingers if you're not careful.

Personally I'm saving the disk platters to make some wind chimes out of, and the magnets are getting used for heavy duty duty, the casings are used as soldering/torching heatsinks, and all the rest of the salvageable bits are saved for other projects in the future.
 

mannye

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Well I do have 5000 feet of magnet wire sitting on my workbench. Hmmmm. And some cardboard tubes. And some stainless steel spheres. Hmmmm but the rest of the stuff is for my tube phono preamp. Nope. Need the tranny.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.
 

joemirando

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Kind of reminds me of the RL02 we used in class. Even had a VAX 11/750 in school. But my favorite home computer was my good old PDP 11/23 with the RL02 packs. I actually ended up teaching one of the classes on UNIX/LINUX for a couple semesters. Ah! The good old days of 440 3 phase hookups!

My first real HD for a PC was a 20MB MFM back lost in the 80's...

So much fun with computers in my past! But all of them lent tons of parts, and those big old drives had some HUGE clonker magnets in them! Really mess up your fingers if you're not careful.

Personally I'm saving the disk platters to make some wind chimes out of, and the magnets are getting used for heavy duty duty, the casings are used as soldering/torching heatsinks, and all the rest of the salvageable bits are saved for other projects in the future.

I found one of those old SCSI drives I was talking about. I opened it up (after several false starts) and finally wrenched the platters out of the housing (there are ELEVEN of 'em!), and then got to the arm holding the magnets. Holy crap that thing must weigh 3/4 lb.! The arm that they're glued to looks like machined cast iron, and its thick enough that I couldn't budge it with a claw hammer. As a matter of fact, I had to twist the hammer back and forth to break the magnets' hold on it. Now I'm thinking of using a Dremel to cut part-way through the iron so that I CAN break it and release the magnets. The platters will probably get used for a miniture dobsonian 'scope mount one of these days.... another thing added to the list.

Joe
 
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