The first thing that I did was jump into Google and  look for a hard drive recovery service in my area. Lucky me, the first result was relatively close to my work, so at lunch time I was there dropping the HDD to get a quote. Half a hour later I got an email with the quote of AU$ 1600, which is almost the price of buying 10 hard drives of 500Gb each.

I was completely horrified, I knew that data recovery services were expensive but even expensive has a limit, that quote was very far beyond from my limit.

So, back to Google again. This time looking for how to recover a hard drive. I knew (as you can see from the picture below) that the issue was on the circuit board, which had a burned part, so I was looking how to replace a PCB (Printed Circuit Board). It is amazing the amount of forums that you can find with people asking for tips how to fix their HDDs.

In one of those forums I have learned that I should match the model, part number and firmware, other than of course the hard drive capacity and RPM. Once I could get hold of a PCB with these settings I could replace the faulty one with the new and it should work.

The hard drive with the new PCB and the old PCB with the black mark.

Now I was getting close, I started to believe that it would be possible to fix my hard drive, all that I needed was another hard drive with the same specifications and functional and that shouldn’t be difficult to find, right? Wrong.

Long history… short…, after months on eBay trying to find a HDD that would match I gave up and went back to Google trying to find another solution.

That was when I found the Dead Hard Drive website, created by a guy that had the same problem that I was facing but back in 2002, along with the site there is an awesome forum where I found “light” to my problem.

Someone has posted a link on the forum where to get hard drive PCBs and that’s how I got to Ultratec a company in UK that sells hard drive parts. I found exactly what I needed. I ordered and 3 days later and with AU$ 151 less on my pocket the new circuit board was on my door.

To replace the circuit board was very easy; I had just to unscrew a few screws and screw back in the new part, connect everything back, turn it on, and “voila”, all the data was there.

Note that I have spent less than 10% of what the data recovery company had asked for the service, and the highest cost was mostly shipping from UK to Australia.

So that was my story about how I fixed my hard drive. Now, let’s start making backups.

The unit is located in a small 4 units townhouse which has art deco style (wood floor, high ceilings, etc), find a picture bellow to how it look likes from outside.

Gift from my mate Steve from work, who got a take away seafood.

I remember playing Enduro hours and hours without stop. The other games that I had played a lot were Frogger and Keystone Kapers, the last one which I usually borrowed from friends. My entire Atari collection had just three games Enduro and Frogger that I just mentioned and Superman, which I kind of like it but had never got too much into it.

All the other Atari games that I had played I had either got from friends or from the rentals. This was the same rental place that I had used to fix my joysticks so many times (what a fragile thing they were). 

On the Xbox 360 everything looks different I can’t imagine that it took me so long to get another video-game console (I’ve shared a PS2 with my flatmates and I own a DS but I guess this doesn’t count). The control (we don’t call it joystick anymore I guess is because it got too complex and the big stick is gone) has so any things to press that I still get confused playing some games.

The Xbox Live (the online section inside Xbox) is REALLY cool. This is the sort of interaction that just the internet could make available. You can chat with friends, compare scores, and see the leaderboard just with your mates and play against/with them. The amount of interaction with friends that is available is unbelievable and varies in between games.

Another cool feature is the ability to download demo of the games on Xbox Live Arcade (a special section on Xbox Live dedicated to arcade games) so you can get to know the game before purchase it. 

In conclusion, I really do miss the time I had spent with my Atari 2600 but Xbox 360 has been a great experience to me and I think everybody should get one. Thanks to my friend Batata that pushed me to open my wallet and get one.

But it is not a long time. Here I am, and just look like yesterday.

You can find my qik profile here. You might find me stream video from time to time, probably not as frenquently as I whould like because I just have signed up for a 100MB data package.

I am looking forward to it especially this first episode of the 4th season with 2 hours! Bellow you can see the catch up video resuming the three past seasons.