Does anyone recognize this old equipment

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miletest@reddit

You needed dual floppy when you couldn't afford a hard drive

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Now I feel old, I remember this. Later my PC had a 40mb harddisk and I upgraded to a 120mb harddisk which cost me $1200. The PC bios didn't recognize it and back then you were lucky if your BIOS had a option to set the numbers for : Cylinders (The number of cylinders (tracks) on the disk), Heads (The number of read/write heads (essentially the number of platters or sides) and the number for Sectors per Track.
These three values defined the CHS (Cylinder-Head-Sector) addressing scheme. I had to go to a guy that took my BIOS chip out, copied it, added my harddisk CHS specs to it. Wiped the chip with UV light and then wrote it back to the chip. Worked!!

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FruitOrchards@reddit

120mb harddisk ?? You're crazy you'll never use all that space.

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Alternative-Law4626@reddit

OMG!! That’s exactly what I said when I went from a 40 MB MFM drive to a 120 MB hard disk. What could I possibly use all this extra space for??

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jkstark@reddit

I remember taking my old 20MB hard drives (yes, had two of them) and converting them to run off of a RLL controller instead of the original MFM controller. Instant upgrade, so to speak, as they were now 30MB disks. I also had a HUGE 150 MB external SCSI drive on this machine.... (Ran a FidoNET regional hub...)

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FruitOrchards@reddit

I think even today younger people don't really understand how far we've come in a short amount of time, even the first PSP PSP-1000 only came with a 32mb memory card. The 1GB which came in 2006 cost about £120 or £200 in today's money.

I did think UMD was the future and that's all anyone would ever use though

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uberRegenbogen@reddit

The curse of CHS hard drive addressing. It took way too long for the IBMoid world to move to block addressing.

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CoffeeSmore@reddit

Was tech support really that much better 30 something years ago?

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capmilk@reddit

Tech support? Didn’t exist back then. Knowing a so-called computer freak was the only way to solve things like this.

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guitpick@reddit

Then again, 30 years ago, most everything still came with a detailed manual, so you had a chance of knowing how to use it.

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Alternative-Law4626@reddit

Scott Mueller, Upgrading and Repairing PCs. 2,000 pages from Que books. I read it all. And Basic Network also from Que. then I switched careers from law to tech.

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CoffeeSmore@reddit

I know, couldn‘t think of any other word unfortunately

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miletest@reddit

I went from 2 x 5¼-inch, to 2 x 3½-inch, from 360 each to 1.4 each. I had to move from an XT before I got a hard drive. Almost as exciting as the day I got a mouse

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techika@reddit

Epson pc-286u, maybe

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ressedue@reddit

Oh man @warmarin I've been trying to find one of these. Message me if you have any interest in selling. Pair with my QX10 :)

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Prudent_Sun5041@reddit

WHOA it's gorgeous, I need one.

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lazywiteboy@reddit

Its an Epson Abacus QX-11. YT video about it

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TwoDeuces@reddit

That is the single strangest power button I've ever seen on the monitor. Push a panel in to give you access to turn a knob to turn the unit on. Why? Like.... why? So weird.

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guitpick@reddit

It beats the TRS-80 Model III's big orange unlabeled "lose your work button." It would inevitably attract the attention of someone looking over your shoulder who would say "What's this button do?" while they pressed it.

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wierdness201@reddit

Ahhh do you happen to have a monitor for it?

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

No, I'm guessing I'll try the atari 5 din cable

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wierdness201@reddit

I couldn’t find anything that could adapt to my model (QX-10).

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

It's a custom cable , made to get video and mono Audio out of the Atari 800xl video din out

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SecretDouble5560@reddit

Some things stay floppy some become with time

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Tricky-Budget5420@reddit

Got two floppy disk drives ? You would become a disk jockey soon. At least from my memory ...

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No_Abrocoma_711@reddit

CX-11

I didn't get around to translating the page, so can't add anything to this thread other than the link.

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Edu_Robsy@reddit

Native dual joystick port is not common at all in PC computers. Specialized computer?

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Gumption666@reddit

Old print server

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

What about the external HDD? I thought it was an ups

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Disastrous-Year571@reddit

Looks like an Epson QX-11 / Q601A

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

Yes, That's the only thing I found

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NorCalFrances@reddit

Just based on the form factor I'm guessing POS / medical / lab? What does it have inside?

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kwimbleton@reddit

It has joysticks on it, never seen an Epson with those before actually.

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

It has a joystick port by the side, a connector for HDD in the back, probably used in banking

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kwimbleton@reddit

Try checking on the bottom for a sticker that may have the info on it, other than that I can't help you as this ones new to me, but probably not used to bank/industrial unless it was specifically mentioned to you when you received it. Epson covered a wide range of professional and home computing devices suited for many different uses both desktop and portable at the time and still do today, I think there was maybe another Epson that may have had joysticks (looked like the lazer-apple iic knockoff or whatever) and it was like an all-in-one home computer type thing, this one is looks almost MSX-style.

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

My uncle got it, and was his PC in the office, he was a banker

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warmarin@reddit (OP)

Sorry, epson q601a

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Kymeron@reddit

Epson QX-11, seems to be a QX-10 purpose built for MS-DOS

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kwimbleton@reddit

Model number would be helpful.