I have to delay PCB design/production for a little while due to my computer issue as of late.
1. I have a Mac laptop with an iOS of Leopard that runs some ancient version of Eagle (and seems to hate Madbean's libraries).
2. I have an ancient emachines PC that I did most of my PCB design on due to being able to run a newer version of Eagle. The caps on the motherboard decide to start leaking, so the majority of my work is trapped on those hard drives.
Due to this odd predicament, I won't be working on PCBs for a bit until I get a new computer (the missus and I were thinking about it for a Christmas present). When that happens, I'll kick some of my ideas into high gear!
If you want to make life easy, you can get an external hard drive enclosure for ~20$ on amazon these days. It will help retrieve that data whenever you get a new rig, without having to deal with the trouble of installing the drive itself.
Ugh, bummer.
Something like this happened to me a few years ago and I ended up losing all my eagle files. Ever since, I use dropbox app and keep them all in a folder there.
If you just want something functional, you can get refurbed "office towers" from Newegg and other places for $150 or so. Plenty good for EagleCad or websurfing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)
That'd be my guess for what killed your old emachines PC.
Quote from: alanp on November 08, 2017, 06:00:01 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)
That'd be my guess for what killed your old emachines PC.
Yup. Had that happen to one of my PC's as well.
Quote from: somnif on November 08, 2017, 03:36:28 AM
If you want to make life easy, you can get an external hard drive enclosure for ~20$ on amazon these days. It will help retrieve that data whenever you get a new rig, without having to deal with the trouble of installing the drive itself.
That was the plan. I think my dad even has an enclosure laying around that I can use.
Quote from: jubal81 on November 08, 2017, 05:44:20 AM
Something like this happened to me a few years ago and I ended up losing all my eagle files. Ever since, I use dropbox app and keep them all in a folder there.
I managed to turn on the PC long enough to grab a few of my Eagle files and put it in a USB drive. I put Eagle on my work computer just to make sure they were ok, and they are. The rub is that my Mac is so obsolete that Dropbox doesn't function correctly, and I can't even get into Google Drive.
Quote from: alanp on November 08, 2017, 06:00:01 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)
That'd be my guess for what killed your old emachines PC.
That's exactly what it sounds like.
At one school where I worked in the past, the IT guy spent an entire year manually replacing all the caps on the school's motherboards, just in case...If you're into it, you could try that :P