the guy with the ide drives is going to bail on me, too. ugh. i've had a lot of bad luck with electronics on kijiji.

he wants to sell 8 ide drives for $75, 6 of which are large drives and two of which are small drives. he'll probably eventually get somebody to buy, but the idea that he's offering some kind of deal with the smaller drives is idiotic.

i offered him $20 for the two small drives. he was sketchy about agreeing, kind of blowing me off, thinking he'd sell them all together. he relisted the 8 drives together this morning and clearly wants to push that as some kind of deal, as clueless as it is.

see, it's going to be people with pcs from before 1999 that are going to want the smaller drives, and people with pcs from about 1999-2005, or so, that are going to want the bigger drives. if your machine can take a 300 gb drive, there's no conceivable reason why you'd want an 80 gb drive, given that they're the same price, nowadays. the smaller drives should even arguably be saved and put aside for the older machines, and not wasted on machines built after 1999.

again: i'm sure he'll find somebody that wants a bunch of drives and will pay for it. what will happen is that the 80 gb drive will end up as a backup somewhere instead of being used. it's sad, but i can't make stupid people rational.

i have another lead on an 80, but it's not clear if it works out.

again: this is something i'll wait out, although i'd like to get my tv up and running.

worst case scenario, if the cost of the drives gets up past a certain point, i'm going to want to look at something like this, instead:
http://nanopi.io/nanopi2-fire.html

i just need to make sure i get one without a wireless connector.

it would be an upgrade, clearly, and a pretty cheap one. but, then what do i do with the old pc?  i don't want to closet it. and, i'll eventually find the drive i want, and feel stupid for getting the board.

again: i'll wait it out.