What 18 GB looked like about 20 years ago

x509

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I was cleaning out my garage and found some old SCSI drives that I was probably going to sell on eBay after I stopped using them. So here is an 18 GB Seagate drive. Note that it is 1.6 inches high.

IMG_0634[1].JPG
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Had a standard size 40GB Maxtor Fireball PATA around 2000 in my 1st PC. Can't remember the spindle speeds or what ATA interface speed.
Only odd sized HDD I had was a 2.5" 12mm 1.5TB I pulled from a external and put it in a ODD caddy for my laptop around 2010. Can't remember the brand, Seagate maybe.
 
I had one of those extra-thick SCSI/SCA disks in a SGI workstation abt 15 years ago! it was like the size of two or three regular HDDs stacked on top of each other, already super outdated at the time, and sounded like a very unbalanced gas turbine spooling up when I started the workstation lol
 
I think 20 years ago I bought my first 64MB USB stick...was mazing. No longer had to carry a set of Laplink cables and the floppy around everyhwere.
 
20 years ago, I had just 10GB storage on my brother's system which I used to access for playing games.
 
Still have a WD Raptor 36GB (10K RPM) in a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz Shuttle SFF. 15+ years and it's still kickin'.

Just wish it was the one with the polycarbonate lens/window.
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Yeah. I remember those. Also remember some cutting drives to make their own windows. Neat idea that rarely went well.

Good to hear about your Raptor enduring 15 years of use. Not sure if you can see GenMay but I did a post about my 36gb Raptor a few days ago. Less than 4 months use because of size, and no speed advantage since it required an inefficient single disk RAID array to use SATA in my nForce2 board at the time. Still has WinXp install from 2005. And several interesting nostalgia tid bits.

https://hardforum.com/threads/pc-nostalgia-on-the-10k-rpm-coffee-warmer.1987509/
 
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Disk packs. Yah. As in 2311, 2314, and 3330 on the big iron. I also used the 2315 1 MB packs on the IBM 1130 mini. That 1130 had the way cool 1627 Calcomp pen plotter. Noisy but great with long rolls of plotter paper.

220px-Disk_Cartridge_2315_type.jb.jpg
 
I still have a couple of 60GB IBM Deathstars that just turned 20 and still spin.
 
Remember I had a Mac SE in college with a 300 MB external spinner thought it had endless storage circa 1984.
 
In 1997 I had a Seagate ST423451W courtesy of the Evil Machine Corporation, good times!!!
 
Still have a WD Raptor 36GB (10K RPM) in a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz Shuttle SFF. 15+ years and it's still kickin'.

Just wish it was the one with the polycarbonate lens/window.
View attachment 193193

I have the polycarbonate one, but it's dead,
IMG_1123.JPG

I also have a pair of 10k rpm 36GB SCSI Cheetahs.
They were sitting in my drawer for almost 15 years and I hooked them up to see if they still worked.
Neither worked at first, stuck them in the freezer over night and one worked and was able to copy everything off of it, the other was still dead, just spun up and made a strange beeping sound every now and then.
IMG_1726.JPG

Back in 1999 or so, we had a pair of 5-1/4 full height Seagate SCSI drives, I think they were 18GB, and we used them in our first non-linear video editor.
those drives must have been like 15lbs each, lol.
 
Still have a WD Raptor 36GB (10K RPM) in a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz Shuttle SFF. 15+ years and it's still kickin'.

Just wish it was the one with the polycarbonate lens/window.
View attachment 193193
Ah yes, the Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10K RPM HDD - those were the bomb in 2007, and they were even featured in the movie Live Free or Die Hard.

Speaking of which, I used to roll with a 5.25" full-height Maxtor 1.2GB SCSI-2 HDD circa 2003 (mostly for fun).
It used 25 watts and had a dedicated ground on it; good times! :cool:

maxtor-1.2gb-5.25-full-height-scsi-hard-drive-po-12s-1.11__09090.1489914002.jpg
 
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Anyone remember MFM ?
I do!
Replaced two 20MB MFM 5.25" half-height disks out of my Compaq Deskpro from 1984/85 with a 4GB Compact Flash disk running on an 8-bit ISA adapter from 2013.

Both disks still had Dbase-III databases with data from 1988-1996 on them.

OGY5YTAxZi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MjQwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.jpg


NzA5NzYyNC5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MjQwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.jpg
 
Anyone remember MFM ?
debug
g=c800:5 etc

MFM = Modified Frequency Modulation, then came the RLL controller (Run Length Limited [encoding]).
50% extra storage using an MFM drive with an RLL controller due to use of compression
... as long as the surface was good enough quality otherwise it ended in bad sectors.
A surprising number of drives stood the test of time.

Without Norton Utilities (the holy grail!) to sort the failing drives, your data was hosed and probably was anyway.
 
debug
g=c800:5 etc

MFM = Modified Frequency Modulation, then came the RLL controller (Run Length Limited [encoding]).
50% extra storage using an MFM drive with an RLL controller due to use of compression
... as long as the surface was good enough quality otherwise it ended in bad sectors.
A surprising number of drives stood the test of time.

Without Norton Utilities (the holy grail!) to sort the failing drives, your data was hosed and probably was anyway.

yes the old NU with SM - sector modifier
 
Ah yes, the Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10K RPM HDD - those were the bomb in 2007, and they were even featured in the movie Live Free or Die Hard.

Speaking of which, I used to roll with a 5.25" full-height Maxtor 1.2GB SCSI-2 HDD circa 2003 (mostly for fun).
It used 25 watts and had a dedicated ground on it; good times! :cool:

and that looked identical to my maxtor 380 and 670 scsi drives
that went to the adaptec 1540 controller
 
Anyone remember MFM ?

Sure. My very first HDD was a 10 MB 8" ( 8" x 5.62" x 14", needed AC power AFAIK) that a friendly salesman gave to me. IOW, it was a "gift." Yep, 10 whole MB. SCSI interface. https://amaus.net/static/S100/shugart/disk/shugart SA1000 10MB Winchester drive.pdf

My system at the time was a CP/M-80 system based on the Z-80 CPU with 64 KB, yes KB of RAM and 2 8" floppy drives. The 10 MB HDD really supercharged that system, even with the limitations of CP/M.

Later on I had an IBM PC AT, to which I added at 30 MB 3 1/2" drive, which also supercharging that system. One of the developers at work lent me Microsoft Xenix, which came on about 20 floppy disks. That was cool, but essentially useless. I put DOS back on that system.
 
God I feel old now. My first personal hard drive was a 5MB FH Seagate ST506 hooked to a hacked Heath S-100 Controller/Data Separator combo in my IMSAI 8080.
 
My first HDD was a 20MB model 5.25" beast that you had to run a script to move the disk arms/heads into shipping mode when shutting down because you couldnt rely on dos 3.0, lol

Oh, and an extended 512K of ram and a sweet hayes modem brick that could do 110 baud all the way up to 2400!!!!

That computer was an awesome upgrade.


Just made me think about all of the hours spent reading Computer Shopper magazine, too, hahaha.
 
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Brings back memories seeing those drives.

I sent FrgMstr an old Maxtor 155MB (yes, megabyte), full height, 5.25" MFM drive to receive tender loving care from a .50 rifle in 2010. As far as I'm aware the drive still worked.

Pics for reference:

AceGoober_Maxtor_525FH_001.jpg
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AceGoober_Maxtor_525FH_003.jpg

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https://hardforum.com/threads/h-ey-kyle-s-h-oot-t-h-is.1527902/
 
i remember watching the screen on the TRS model 3 blink a * as it read off the leaderless tape at 300 baud

i bet most on here never even heard the word baud and how it relates to computers/networking
 
I miss dial-up BBSing. I started with a fancy 1200 baud modem. I definitely miss some of the daily turn games that were common back in the day. Never had to deal with a TRS model 3, thankfully. Went from a Vic20 to a Leading Edge model D. Swapping floppies FTW!
 
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