John,

>Doug
>
>I got quite serious with the Amiga. I bought a 2000(?) which came with a hard disk! It had a 20Mb SCSI and you knew that was incredibly powerful because it sounded like a turbine as it spun up, took 1 minute before you could use it. Anything that takes that long has to be powerful- sort of like a Pentium III starting with Win2000.
>
>It was about the same time that Ian Darroch and I blew the electrics in the human sciences building by holding down a circuit breaker so that a multi-platter hard drive we had acquired surplus from a local corporate would start up. You could hear that one throughout the building before things went bad, but people were not very happy about that at the time and as they never found out who it was, I'll leave it at that. I'll never forget the sight and sound of a stack of 2-foot heavy winchesters spinning faster and faster- terrifying, especially if you are in the same room and have no idea whether the thing has been maintained and what happens if something comes loose.
>
>Makes my complaints about the flimsy keyboard on my Inspiron seem somewhat less important.
>
>Regards
>
>JR

Fun stuff... < s >

I can recall my absolute HORROR when a fellow stopped a 30-30 by lifting the plexiglas top off and placing his finger on the top platter... <g>

I wasn't aware that the top platter had no data on it. <g> Well, until then.. <g>