Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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I like to use hard drives when possible, as a hard drive makes vintage computers sound and feel more real. Therefore, I've purchased four old hard drives on eBay (the place I buy the things I later regret™): two 5.25" full-height hard drives, one 5.25" half-height hard drive, and one 3.5" hard card (via the 5150).

Last week, we successfully low level formatted one of the full height MFM hard drives (an IBM WD20), and unsuccessfully got past POST with the other full height MFM drive (an Imprimis/Seagate Wren II). I confirmed on Dave's last stream that the missing terminator isn't the problem keeping the Wren II from POSTing, so it either has a bad head, a bad servo platter, or a failed electrical component.

This leaves two drives to format: the RLL drive and the hard card. Let's do that tonight! And if it arrives, we're going to use a gift from Dave as the platform for formatting the RLL drive!

Will any of these drives low-level format? Will all of them spin up? Will I get tired of rebooting DOS? You'll have to watch to find out!

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