You have a 64DD? Wow.
Are you able to elaborate as to how and where you acquired it? What has the reverse engineering process entailed and has it involved your Macs? I'd like to know more.
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Advice on Potential Purchases Thread
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You have a 64DD? Wow.
Are you able to elaborate as to how and where you acquired it? What has the reverse engineering process entailed and has it involved your Macs? I'd like to know more.
eBay. Looking at the search results for "64DD", 235 listings show up and on the front page at least, the majority of them are 64DD units, not games or accessories like the modem or capture card. They're not rare -- at least 15,000 of them were made and sold (and who knows how many more on top of that, personally I think the number is closer to 40,000 -- that was just the number of 64DDs there were still connected to Randnet on shutdown in February 2001, but known serials exceed 35,000; I have somewhere around 11,500). You can always find a handful (or at least, I can), they're just expensive. They're kind of like the G4 Cube. It's actually much harder to find one at Yahoo Auctions in my (long and arduous) experience, and I tried for a few years before I decided to get the one on eBay that was a buy-it-now. So far, I haven't been able to do much, all my tools are stored away while I'm searching for a place to live -- I'm currently staying at my grandmother's house, and all my tools are kind of buried. I've been making progress, though, on getting to them.
For the most part, I've been talking with LuigiBlood and getting up to speed on how the software works, and of course how the hardware does. That way I'm not just wasting time and I'm more prepared for when I do have the space to take it apart. It just works like a cartridge with removable storage and a tiny IPL ROM that also has some libraries for standardized type and sound. A random fact I learned in the catching up to speed process that really stuck out to me for how weird it is is that for some reason, 64DD disks have twelve random blank sectors. I thought it was copy protection, but apparently disks read just fine without them, so it's a total mystery. My only guess was manual copy protection -- like, if you mailed the disk to Nintendo, they could notice it there, but even that's not founded on literally anything.
I don't doubt I'll be using my Macs for publishing anything I find, and talking to people; they're my daily drivers, after all. Probably see how well it handles PCB CAD, this 1080p flat panel I've somehow found myself using is kind of thrashing this 9800 Pro, but I might be able to get better results with Linux.
For the most part, I've been talking with LuigiBlood and getting up to speed on how the software works, and of course how the hardware does. That way I'm not just wasting time and I'm more prepared for when I do have the space to take it apart. It just works like a cartridge with removable storage and a tiny IPL ROM that also has some libraries for standardized type and sound. A random fact I learned in the catching up to speed process that really stuck out to me for how weird it is is that for some reason, 64DD disks have twelve random blank sectors. I thought it was copy protection, but apparently disks read just fine without them, so it's a total mystery. My only guess was manual copy protection -- like, if you mailed the disk to Nintendo, they could notice it there, but even that's not founded on literally anything.
I don't doubt I'll be using my Macs for publishing anything I find, and talking to people; they're my daily drivers, after all. Probably see how well it handles PCB CAD, this 1080p flat panel I've somehow found myself using is kind of thrashing this 9800 Pro, but I might be able to get better results with Linux.
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They can ship to the UK but my goodness, the costs are unreal! A 10lbs 15-15-12 parcel carries a shipping cost of at least $100 USD. This would bring the total to $180 USD. Unless any of you have suggestions of how I can work around this (beyond hiring a flock of pigeons), I might have to cancel.
One idea that came to mind was dispatching everything in smaller, separate packages.
A five year warranty is a five year warranty and better than what Cex will offer. However, recovering 10GB of data, even in a RAID, is painful.
They should be OK. HDDs are pretty robust. If they don't fail in the first year, they should be ok. Just run DriveX on whatever arrives. Let's hope Amazon overpackages whatever it sends. That's the biggest risk.
They should be OK. HDDs are pretty robust. If they don't fail in the first year, they should be ok. Just run DriveX on whatever arrives. Let's hope Amazon overpackages whatever it sends. That's the biggest risk.
Appreciate the reassurance. Here's the Amazon link to the item if you're curious to see info. I found a brand new 8TB drive on eBay for £100 last night but I'm still tempted to pick up one of these if they'll be ok as you've advised as my storage issues would be sorted out for quite some time to come. Thanks for the tip about DriveDx too!
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The one
This means the Renewed in the title must be referring to Amazon's one year warranty on used drives. Not so hot, then. You might want to dig a little deeper before diving in as I don't trust Amazon with any warranty after 30 days. Amazon makes it very difficult to raise a complaint.
One word of caution with that drive. As far as I can tell, the HGST drives were made up until 2018, so that drive must be coming up to the end of its 5 year warranty (assuming WD is honouring them). Apparently the manufacturing date is somehow hidden in the first three digits of the serial number but I can't tell which number is the serial number on that Amazon drive. It's a mess of a label.Appreciate the reassurance. Here's the Amazon link to the item if you're curious to see info. I found a brand new 8TB drive on eBay for £100 last night but I'm still tempted to pick up one of these if they'll be ok as you've advised as my storage issues would be sorted out for quite some time to come. Thanks for the tip about DriveDx too!
This means the Renewed in the title must be referring to Amazon's one year warranty on used drives. Not so hot, then. You might want to dig a little deeper before diving in as I don't trust Amazon with any warranty after 30 days. Amazon makes it very difficult to raise a complaint.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
It's certainly confusing because the listing states that the item is:
Backed by the 1-year Amazon Renewed Guarantee.
However, it also states:
"We are confidence that to honor another 5 Years Warranty for these hard drives. Buy with confidence & worry free!" and "5 Year Warranty from Reseller, Worry free Return! 100% Full Refund."
Grammatical errors aside, the reseller is Amazon - so which is it? One year or five years? I can't see a portal to query the details with Amazon so I'm going to steer well clear. Fingers crossed that I'll find another bargain on eBay at some point.
Now that you make note of it, I did notice how the example pic shows that specific HDD was manufactured, explicitly, in December 2016:
But if it sat unused throughout this time, the 1-year reseller warranty is probably fine.
There's no chance of that...
The poor grammar throughout the entire description doesn't meet the basic standard of professionalism that would be expected of Amazon. A Google search using the sentences brought up the results for a trader who sells HDDs on eBay and elsewhere. This seems so suspect - Amazon is fronting for this company it seems to the point of even copying and pasting their badly written production description without correction - but why?