Never come across SIMMverters before, they look as ridiculous as they do useful. Love it!

@DerekPeldo

3 жыл бұрын

Have you come across any pci ram disk? I always wanted one, but they were out of my price range: www.newegg.com/gigabyte-gc-ramdisk-others/p/N82E16815168001

@rasz

3 жыл бұрын

@@DerekPeldo Макс Крюков did a comprehensive video on one SSD Gigabyte i-RAM: kzread.info/dash/bejne/c4Ft07enpdvKks4.html

@tommyboy9998

3 жыл бұрын

could totally use a 70pin to 30pin adaptor! that would have an actual use..

@nebular-nerd

3 жыл бұрын

I read this in your voice 😅😁

@francoisrevol7926

3 жыл бұрын

It shouldn't be too hard to make something alike again, also another option is to have the second one with sockets on the other side of the PCB, which wouldn't require making it taller.

The time and effort you put in going through each received mail item, makes these mail call videos special. Thanks!

@philallin5071

3 жыл бұрын

Totally agree

@Frank-Thoresen

3 жыл бұрын

I also appreciate the videos. I don't know others that does it.

There were mirrored versions of the simverters so that you could put a second pair facing the opposite direction.

@movax20h

3 жыл бұрын

I was just wondering about that. Thanks. Would be nice to score the mirrored ones. So you can put all 4 in the motherboard. Would be nice. Never heard of this product, but it is cool idea I guess for the time.

@russwilliams4678

3 жыл бұрын

Hirsute no doubt!

@Shmbler

3 жыл бұрын

Yep. Just a few weeks ago when I was sorting out papers I found a 1995 invoice from a computer store. Apparently I bought two SIMM adapters, a "right" and a "left" one, to reuse my old 8x1MB SIMMS in a newer 486 PCI board with 72 pin slots only.

@galier2

3 жыл бұрын

@@movax20h I pictured some here facebook.com/photo?fbid=1566920573491379&set=pcb.1566920673491369

@NamesGolden

3 жыл бұрын

those are the ones I remember. I cut my teeth in the mid 90's with a truckload of 486 era stuff and had a few of these in it. always figured they were super common.

1:35 The funny thing is that today, a used and working 72-pin SIMM module is cheaper to buy than one of those 'SIMMverters'. 4:31 Putting a module into a socket with those metal clips is just such a satisfying task. All those modern flimsy solutions are nothing compared them. 4:50 Those selectors are called the presence detect, retroactively called parallel (PPD) to distinguish them from the modern solutions which actually use a ROM that is read in a serial fashion (SPD). You are right saying that the PPD is not used anymore on later motherboards as they automatically detect the size of the RAM. However, they cannot detect the speed of the modules, so those boards typically provide a way to set up the speed (if they are not designed to work with one speed only anyway), the most modern ones even went as far and allowed to set it up in the CMOS Setup. 10:15 I have made the experience that the tin-plated contacts of those memory modules are notorious for making bad contacts, especially because they are usually old and had some nice time to build up an oxide layer. 31:50 The moment when the viewer already sees that big fat scratch on the upper side of the second platter and Adrian is still guessing 😁

Omg, drop everything! New episode!!

@marcelofrau8818

3 жыл бұрын

I was exactly like that here hahaah..

@Anacronian

3 жыл бұрын

Drop everything... Is that you linus?

For a hidden reset switch solution, I recommend gluing a reed switch on the inside of the case somewhere. Then reset will occur when you hold a magnet up to that spot in the outside of the case.

LTT covered the SODIMM to DIMM adapters, they're sold on Amazon when I last saw a long time ago

@thumbwarriordx

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I assume they're a more relevant thing in China. They've been converting parts to go in places the manufacturer never intended for decades. LOTS of laptop parts converted for desktop use by enterprising fellas in China.

@computercomputer8922

3 жыл бұрын

Also laptop Wi-Fi to desktop Wi-Fi cards.

@garzonimpleks

3 жыл бұрын

@@computercomputer8922 i'm using one of those right now, mostly because i could not for the life of me get a regular PCI-e wi-fi card with 5GHz for my PC where i live.

@kztech1319

3 жыл бұрын

There you go: kzread.info/dash/bejne/gnpspsignJa9qJc.html

@Radi0laria_

3 жыл бұрын

They’re pretty useful for testing laptop memory on a test bench rather than having to use an actual laptop

If you’re wondering how the mouse adapter works, you can check the project page for the adapter. Raphael makes awesome open source stuff :) www.raphnet.net/electronique/apple_iic_mouse_fixer/index_en.php

@davidmcgill1000

3 жыл бұрын

So it's not even adapting anything and only enforcing direction of data? What a strange fix.

This video title should've been "When hard drives become metal lathes".

I remember these from back in the day. They had a few drawbacks. First, being so tall it was easy to break sockets with them. They also had compatibility issues which were usually said to be due to memory timing. There was not a lot of discussion on the jumpers so that may have been an issue as well. The biggest issue was they tended to be comparatively expensive, offsetting the savings. As an alternative, there were a few companies that claimed to be able to take the chips off your 30 pin sims and put them on 72 pin boards.

I recently had a 500GB Seagate drive that had a catastrophic failure that my computer tech friend had never seen before. In the middle of the night the bearing seized up so hard and so suddenly, the rotational momentum of the platters snapped the spindle shaft right off. The motor continued trying to spin what was left, and it woke me up making one hell of a racket. Until that point it had been a very reliable drive over the previous 13 years or so.

for the PCJr i think one could make a basic PCB, 3D print a cartridge and insert it on the slot, with a button protruding from the front! So the reset button can still be there in the front, but no need to drill the case front or back!

@MatthewPiercey

3 жыл бұрын

That'd be a cool idea for sure! Maybe one version could just sit flush with the button on the front, and another could be a larger port extender that pops all the way out, has a button on the side, and lets you still put a cartridge in that slot. Obviously the first one would be more practical, though.

@adriansdigitalbasement

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah would totally work well! Surprised no one came up with that idea actually.

@eDoc2020

3 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement I actually thought of that when I was watching this, but it seems I'm late to the party here. Rather than design a new PCB you could modify some existing cartridge. Since it appears there's a kit for that it should be easy.

I had one of those RAM stacks. My brother worked for NCR and used to get free RAM out of computers that were being upgraded, so I ended up with 32MB in my PC. I remember I had to move the PS over ½" to clear the overhanging RAM .

I love your evil laugh while discovering the drive "threw a rod." As always, you've presented us with an entertaining and informative video! Thanks very much!

I had one of these SIMM adapters! Back in the Super Socket 7 days. I remember being surprised when it actually worked.

@TheErador

3 жыл бұрын

Is there a performance penalty or were the two types at the time fairly similar?

@JohnVance

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheErador I’m honestly not sure, but I can’t imagine it was as performant as having the real thing. I had virtually no cash and just cobbled together PCs from whatever dumpster finds and junk I could get my hands on, so I was just glad to have a working MMX 200 system to run Slackware on!

That platter damage looks exactly like what I expected. The second you turned on that drive I cringed and said OOOF that drive is GRINDING off the surface.

Adrian is a DJ: scratching his way through a scsi platter like a pro!

Regarding the unhappy drive, I’m reminded of an incident at a previous job. We had a test bench that had an ancient IBM XT running the equipment on this automated system, and one day, one of the techs was checking out something at the bench when he heard a loud *CLANG* and the IBM stopped working. He was momentarily confused by the noise as he thought something had fallen off the bench onto the floor, it was that loud. He soon realized the computer was down, and some checking revealed the drive had pretty much “thrown a rod”. The dead PC was sent back to the customer who was cheap enough to send over a cobbled together from spare parts PC as a replacement. At least we got to retire the 5 1/4” drive we used to ‘sneakernet’ the test results to the main network in favor of a then modern 3 1/2” drive.

Your videos are so interesting. I've learned things I didn't know before about some of this older tech. Thanks!

Picture quality is really good in this video! Thanks Adrian!

Quality content as usual, Adrian. Keep up the good work, your friendly and positive attitude makes these videos entertaining and leaving us wanting more =)

I enjoyed your shiny head, Adrian! :) Thanks for sharing your joy!!

Messing around, trying to setup MEGA.NZ on 2 OS's on my laptop, and Adrian drops by. Thank you, sir! This is a great timing from you!

Your theme song is so good. Such a great intro for your content.

"Tighten the thumb screws" -- that's very effective for getting information.

"That would be the unhappy sound..." hahahahahahahahahaha that killed me! I remember those long, angry computer beeps. :)

I recently hit the notification bell, and your last 2 videos I did get a notification on my phone, so it does appear to work.

That Raphnet site is worth a glance. He’s got all kinds of neat projects. I built one of the NES/SNES to USB converters, and am working on a 3D printed wedge enclosure for it. :-)

Whoa, a non-yellowed Apple IIC, rare as diamonds! Also super nice to see that there are some Apple mice left that look as if we stepped into a time machine to the mid to late 80's! Awesome work, keep it up!

Those simverters remind me of the shortlived ramdrives which were notoriously painful to get setup. I always remember ASrock were pretty forward in having next gen and current gen CPU and memory sockets.

@fabiosemino2214

3 жыл бұрын

And the ecs k7s-5a

@JohnVance

3 жыл бұрын

I swear ASRock’s design team used madlibs for product planning. They’re like here’s one with Socket 478 AND Socket A! Here’s another that will take RD-DIMMs or magnetic core memory! We’re craaaaazy!

I just watched a video on how important it is to like and comment on videos from channels I watch. So from now on I will always comment and say how much your videos cheer me up every week!

Oh dear... I used those 30 to 72pin Adaptors back in the day. And boy were they not that great. Granted, they worked for the most part and it was a good way to get your old (1MB) Simms to your new rig and not having to pay immense ammounts of money for Memory...

My favourite American KZreadr and curious Marc

Love the fact that you take the time to show everything as opposed to just unboxing it. Really cool. Congratz on the upcoming milestone. I wish you many more to come ! Take care ....

KZread always delivers your videos to the upper left hand corner of my feed, so prime real estate.

In the early 90s I was working in a shop that built custom pc. Serviced really old XT as well. There was a cool 8 bit isa IDE card that would work in XTs, full of jumpers, it even had a IDE connector in the slot cover.

Used a siverter when i upgraded a friends 386 in the 90s. very useful if you were budget conscious.

Have used SODIMM to DIMM adapters for DDR3. They worked for me.

That brought back memories! I had a couple of these. RAM was expensive. Unless it was a rumor, I believe there was a fire at a RAM Factory.

Adrian, I just thought I'd mention that I do always get the notifications for when you release a new video. So it does work for some of us at least.

used some of these back in the day. even had motherboards that used both 32 and 72 pin sockets (could only use one or the other)

I love your channel! Greetings from Paraguay!

36:55 Ian takes the words outta my mouth.... God Bless

You got me curious, so I looked it up: Turns out SODIMM adapters are a real thing, and they're widely available. Neat. I don't have use for one right now, but not long ago, I definitely could have.

I have one of those CMS enclosures sitting in storage. It was originally used with a dual-floppy Mac SE, and actually has a 3.5" drive inside.

In one of Steve Gibson's old tangents on his security now show, he mentioned the phenomena you mentioned on old (and current) hard disks - it's called Sticktion. It's what happens when the head instead of riding above the platter, sticks to it. and on the older drives, it rips the heads right off on spinup. (Steve Gibson, creator of the apple light pen and hard drive software Spinrite, at grc dot com)

back in the 386/486 day we took one of those and swapped it for a roommates 3.5 IDE drive, after removing the read/write head assembly and taking the counterweight and glueing it to the top platter

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's partitioned around bad sectors. I've done that on the 320gig drive in the junk laptop I'm typing it on. I know it's risky but it was all free and it hasn't caused too much trouble yet.

When I was a kid I had a sodimm adapter that worked with the pc card style ram upgrade for the original 486 think pads. This reminded me of them

I just got one of the SD-Cart JR boards mentioned at 11:50. Looking forward to loading up my PCjr with software!

I worked for Seagate in the mid. '80's in Scotts Valley, CA Our drives had horrible bearings; I'd *NEVER* own one!

@stefanegger

3 жыл бұрын

WD all the way... Seagate sucks.

@mal2ksc

3 жыл бұрын

@@stefanegger Spinning rust sucks in general now. Anyone who can afford better is using solid state, so all that's left are the budgetest of the budget hard drives. Old spinning rust wears out. Even the vintage authenticity police are going to have to accept solid state replacements when the old drives can no longer be obtained.

@subg9165

3 жыл бұрын

​@@mal2ksc aren't mechanical hard disks able to withstand many more write cycles than ssd's? and i personally prefer the higher storage capacity you can get for cheaper out of a mechanical hard disk over the little bit of speed advantage you get with an ssd.

@jordanhazen7761

3 жыл бұрын

@@subg9165 A smallish SSD system drive for speed & silence, plus one or more large/slow/cheap 5400rpm mechanical HDs for bulk storage (spun down when not in use) can be a good combination. Watch out for stealth shingled drives, though. There is still a market for faster HDs (e.g. 15000rpm SAS) in write-heavy server applications limited by SSD write-cycle endurance.

I remember those SIMM adapters. I also remember they released a few motherboards that had 72 and 30 pin slots to allow both types of memory.

I had a MoBo that supported both types of RAM. I remember first upgrading the MoBo, then saving up and replacing the ram! Think it was an AMD 486 DX4. Brilliant PC!

Greetings from the U.K. Great video, the audio seemed ok for me didn’t appear to be any issues.

Those simmverters came in four types, two tall, two short with the 30 pin simm sockets mounted on right or left. My dad friend brought me down to a computer shop in Toronto during the 486/Pentium era.

I remember some 30 pin extenders so you could put 4, 1 meg sticks into one 30 pin slot on the board.

Another amazing video

Wow didn't know they existed! I need some now...

For the PC Junior Reset Switch you can easily put an Reed Switch behind the Faceplate. No drilling just a tiny drop of Hot Glue. To Reset the Machine hold an little Magnet on the Spot. Greetings from Germany.

I know this adapters as SIMM Shuttles. I had two of them. One right angle and one left angle to reuse my expensive 8*1MB Simms on my DX4-100 upgrading form a 486DLC-40.

Great video, took me back to the days of my first workplace netware server, it had a pair of full height 5 1/4” scsi drives running in mirror mode. And for extra resilience they had 2 scsi cards and cables rather than one scsi card and daisy chaining the drives. I think those drives were about 900mb and cost the world. I remember thinking these are probably going to be the largest (in physical size and logical size I am ever likely to see) boy was I wrong

Hi, nice another video. I Purchased a new 486DX4100 back in the day and it came with those sim adapters, i now guess the computer shop (it was a generic clone build up ) just used the adapters and got rid of the stock of old / slow ram ) It worked fine, i never noticed it until i opened the case after the warranty ran out and upgraded the video and sound card We also had a collection of slim line / pizza box systems 486's at work and one of the IT support called me over and asked if i have ever seen this - it was a similar setup , but the system had horizontally located add on slots and actually used the base of the memory adapter and 2 sets of ribbon cable to a add on card that held the memory - the isa cards had no connectors on the bottom they just use the external case slot for mounting like say the "spare" slot of serial and parallel connectors of a multi I/O card My Pentium-100 has a motherboard that takes both 30 and 72 pin simms For younger people the reason for this was PC's were very expensive back in the day, 4 x 100meg sims cost me $400, i also paid @ $400 for those nice new 40meg IDE hard drives It is such a shame that early IDE hard drives had a hit and miss quality and many sounded like a can of marbles in say 2 to 3 years Regards George

Those Goldstar 30-pin SIMMs make great keyrings; just put a keyring hoop through the hole on the corner. I’ve had one on my keys for years 👍

@linuxuser21629

3 жыл бұрын

I do this with dead 72 pin. I can then just slip the ram stick in my back pocket

I love the car reference at 36:21!!!!!

They actually do make adapters still that can take DDR3/DDR4 laptop ram and put it in a desktop form factor, excellent video Adrian :)

I actually internally modified a Mac mouse to work with my IIc. It still works with the Mac, too! (I have a working example of the CMS drive, by the way, that I use with my Mac Plus.)

Simverters go in both directions too.. Had a computer a while ago with 4 in them side by side and facing both directions lol. One set the 30 pin simms faced up, and the other side they faced down.

I remember partitioning old drives down to a few MB either side of bad sectors back yonks ago to reuse hard drives people threw out in the Conner 40mb or so days

Yeah, I bought a couple of those 30-72 pin SIMM adapters to use when I upgraded from a 386 to a 486. Allowed me to add an extra 8MB from my 386 to my 486, for a total of 16MB. I think I might have them in a box somewhere, so I should check if they've got the resistors set to anything in particular.

I got one of those CMS external harddrives! It worked ones and then the power supply start clicking (protection mode?) and won't start up. The drive seemed fine tho. I got the CMS together with a Mac Plus that I got donated by a friend. Thanks for a great video! PS That notification works just fine for me. Especially when surfing youtube, I get a notification within seconds from the release. If I'm surfing elsewhere on the internet Firefox tells me at least within minutes.

Yes, I have seen SODIMM to regular sized DIMM converters. I think they're also passive, since SODIMM and regular DIMM are just different sized packages but electrically the same.

It sounds like the adaptor for the mouse is changing timing or acting as some kind of buffer. Apple, at the time, had different chip suppliers and there could be buffering or timing issues between versions of the same mouse, even if they had the same shape and same model number. As a few others have said, you take a lot more time on unboxing than most channels that do unboxing care to do. It does make these more special. As a note, I always get notifications of your vidoes. I just sometimes can't watch them on same day as release due to time constraints :)

There were 30 pin to 30 pin SIMM adapters. Had 2 in my old 386. It would allow you to reuse your older 30 pin 1 Mb modules, total of 4 megs, in one slot. They had multiple orientations suited for your configuration. They sold them at CompUSA and Circuit City back in the mid-90s.

There are 44 pin mobile IDE to m.2 SATA SSD adapters available on eBay. Got one myself, and it absolutely worked with my old Dell C600 laptop.

Wow had one of those in our office under the mac plus

I remember in the old days heads getting stuck, as I think there was something on the disk surface to try and protect the disk from the heads hitting. And if parked for some time the stick on it, warming the drive up before starting it could help.

Best thumbnail to hover over!

A true bigfoot user, I saw Adrian's face drop when he read those words. When Compaq used them they had a firmware update for the 1.2 and 2.5GB drives that fixed an issue that caused them to die. The biggest I ever saw was a 12GB version.

@frogz

3 жыл бұрын

i remember the last bigfoot drive i used on my grandmother's pc and i didnt have any other drives besides a 6 gig!

I remember those adaptors and I remember the slot expanders, you could plug up to 8 SIMMs into a single slot. I had a couple, full of 256k cards.

I had a two 72pin SIMM to single 72pin SIMM converter on my IBM ps/1 consultant

That stepper in the HDD is mounted to the swing-arm of the head just like the stepper is connected to the heads in a TEAC 5-1/4 drive! (metal strip wrapped around the stepper 'pulley')

I saw one of those ram adators at a computer show in 1996 and never again but I remember the slots being bigger.

I used to use 5.25" hard drive platters to create wind chimes. You should try it!

the time I know... Thanks for sharing it with us.

Adrian: The moment you started the HDD up without the lid on you could see perfectly the top disc to be warped on the outside. As the r/w-head moved to the outside, it was no wonder you could hear scraping noises. I suggest putting your SD to SCSI-Adapter in the enclosure in order to have the right style of external hdd to go along your Macs.

I got four 1MB 30 pin SIMMs for Christmas one year. My computer needed 72 pin SIMMs. I tried one of these but I couldn't get it working. I didn't notice the solder pads but I doubt it mattered. I sold them for $20 each at a computer show to someone who proved they were good and tried a 72 pin SIMM. That didn't work either. That led to retiring that Packard Bell and building my first custom PC that had working SIMM slots.

It looks like you've still got the security tag on all of your clothes... ;-) fun videos!!!

The switches on the back of the CMS hard drive are for setting the SCSI ID. You could daisy chain several drives. I think up to 6 pluss the internals.

“As always thank you for sharing”. Greetings from Karachi, Pakistan.

You can still use the board on the back of that ST-277N to possibly repair another like drive if the board on that drive is the problem. I have fixed “like” drives by this easy fix, so don’t toss it. The old Seagate 5.25 drives used to come with a “defect map” on top of the drive, NEW from the factory. Unheard of in later years, and you would use a HDD utility to map out the bad (head, sector, track) spot before partitioning and formatting the drive! Ugh! Seagates and other drives had a high failure rate in the late 80’s, but a hard drive was a hard drive and a luxury to most users. Those external drives were quite expensive back in the day. Parts can always be repurposed to some use!

The 30 to 72 pin SIMM adapters were neat back in the day but were mostly useful to 486 and some earlier Pentium based machines in the PC world. And only if you used loose 70 or 80 ns memory timings. Trace length became an issue and prevented tighter timings from being reliably used. For a 100+ mhz Pentium or equivalent AMD or Cyrix CPUs you needed to use EDO 72 pin SIMMs for best performance, especially if you were doing any sort of overclocking or adjusting the FSB above 60 or 66 mhz.

Another great postbag here - thanks for sharing. The SIMMverter is something that I never knew existed! I have a suggestion for the PC Junior reset button location that would allow use of a reset without having to drill a hole in the case. Could you mount a reed switch with hot glue to the inside of the case and operate it with a magnet?

Finally I got notification that new video is ready.

If I where you, I'd keep the good platters from that hard drive, you can always make a platter transplant to another drive. Yes, you can do that with some of those old drives pretty easily.

I remember trying those 30 pin to 72 pin converter when I was upgrading my 486. Couldn't get it to work so I sold my old 30 pin SIMMs through a local BBS. Looking at this video, maybe it was because that I didn't set those bridges correctly to match the new SIMM and had some conflict.

Try running spinrite on that 2.5" IDE drive. It may be able to recover those lost sectors. It uses low level control on the hard drive and can even recondition weak sectors back to working order. Doesn't always work, but if it can't fix them, itll map around them, avoiding the need to have to do it via partitioning around the bad ares.

OMG, the Quantum BigFoot, the jokes about that were nearly as bad as the IBM Deathstar

@shadowflash705

3 жыл бұрын

There was also Maxtor DeathMax.

@nebular-nerd

3 жыл бұрын

And dodgy Seagate's do the Seagate Shuffle. 😁

@Gectms

3 жыл бұрын

I remember the old JTS Champion HDDs and KALOK drives....both pretty much guaranteed to die a quick death.

@shadowflash705

3 жыл бұрын

@@Gectms Kalok. I remember those well. The worst drives at that time.

Hi Adrian, let's get right to it.....I hope you see this, love your channel 😁👍👍👌Love from the UK

Actually Simverters were not only available ready to use, but also PCB only (if you have the soldering skills to desolder the sockets from an old defective board). PCB only was quite cheap. I got a board with 30-pin sockets at a time the old 30-pin memory cost more than 3 times so much as the 72-pin ones. I used the Simverter PCB the other way around. I soldered a 72pin socket to the end of the PCB and pinheaders on the position where normaly the 30-pin sockets should go. the pinheaders I soldered directly into the 30pin sockets on the board. So I was able to connect a 72-pin ram on a board with 4 30pin sockets - and it worked well.

You can get converters from DDR4 SODIMM to DIMM, I believe there are even a few that allow you to populate 2 SODIMMs onto a single converter board but I suspect they are specific to a particular board and firmware. I have always had a liking for transitional oddities like motherboards that support 2 or more RAM types or have multiple CPU sockets to support different generations etc. The newest board I have that does this (DDR3 and DDR4 RAM slots on the same board) is an ASRock H170 Combo. Obviously it's an either or situation but still nice to have the choice.