Anyone here old enough to have worked with this hard drive??

MisterEd · 23 Aug 2021

jadinolf said:

Try this one.
I'll be 100 in 13 years and I used to own a Radio Shack (bought it in 1977).
There's not much I haven't seen and I have no Radio Shack stuff to show off (darnit!)

My brother playing Star Trek on my old computer.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I
CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 1.774 MHz
RAM: 16 KB
Monitor: 12 inch monochrome
Storage: cassette tape drive
O/S: Level II BASIC

Anyone here old enough to have worked with this hard drive??-2021-08-23-0009-1a.jpg

Computer upgraded with more RAM and floppy drives

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I with Expansion Interface
CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 1.774 MHz
RAM: 48 KB
Monitor: 12 inch monochrome
Storage: dual 5-1/4 inch floppy drives & dual 8 inch floppy drives
O/S: TRSDOS & NEWDOS, CP/M

Anyone here old enough to have worked with this hard drive??-2021-08-23-0009-2a.jpg

haybaker · 09 Sep 2021

Lance1 said:

It's a Shugart Associates 8 inch drive. I'm on my Glamping trip and walking through Castlegar BC and came across this computer shop. In the window on a shelf was this old drive. I haven't seen a drive like that. I went inside and asked if I could take some pics of the drive. To my surprise the guy said No Problem as I thought NO! I took some pics and was on my way after about 45 minutes of conversation. I got back to my Glamping site and started some research and found and downloaded the "CSC Hard Drive Bible 7th Edition 1994 Hard Drive Bible" And found the drive specs. See image of the specs and the drive. Obviously nonfunctional and note its a single plater. I found a video of a guy spinning one up and listen how loud it is. Anyway I thought I would relate my little experience.

Flashback, seeing one of these. Wow. Yes, I used to service these, filters, heads, alignment, electronics, and this fascinating bit of technology where you had to perfectly align 2 PC boards about .005 in apart, that had interlaced traces on them used for track spacing on the linear motor. I used to have a couple of them. They were massive. Weighed about 175 pounds, and had this 1 inch thick aluminum slab plate that I used to strip everything off of, to sell for aluminum scrap. Wow, what people would pay for those. State of the art in 1980s. I also had one of its 90 MB big brothers - the CDC Phoenix.

strollin · 09 Sep 2021

Lance1 said:

It's a Shugart Associates 8 inch drive. I'm on my Glamping trip and walking through Castlegar BC and came across this computer shop. In the window on a shelf was this old drive. I haven't seen a drive like that. I went inside and asked if I could take some pics of the drive. To my surprise the guy said No Problem as I thought NO! I took some pics and was on my way after about 45 minutes of conversation. I got back to my Glamping site and started some research and found and downloaded the "CSC Hard Drive Bible 7th Edition 1994 Hard Drive Bible" And found the drive specs. See image of the specs and the drive. Obviously nonfunctional and note its a single plater. I found a video of a guy spinning one up and listen how loud it is. Anyway I thought I would relate my little experience.

I worked for Shugart Associates in 1975 when their only product was an 8-inch floppy drive. I moved on in 1977, before they got into the hard drive business. Left floppy drives behind and went to work in IBM's hard drive business where I stayed for 20 years.

Berton · 09 Sep 2021

That's several years before my time. Going through a box in my storage shed revealed half-a-dozen IBM Travan data tapes for my old Colorado Memory backup drive which has been long gone, out with the tapes.

MisterEd · 09 Sep 2021

Berton said:

That's several years before my time. Going through a box in my storage shed revealed half-a-dozen IBM Travan data tapes for my old Colorado Memory backup drive which has been long gone, out with the tapes.

That brings back bad memories. I made a bunch of tapes with a Colorado Memory backup drive. When I went to recover some data from a tape it only ran the tape off the spool. After it ran another tape off the spool I threw it and all the tapes in the garbage.

strollin · 10 Sep 2021

MisterEd said:

That brings back bad memories. I made a bunch of tapes with a Colorado Memory backup drive. When I went to recover some data from a tape it only ran the tape off the spool. After it ran another tape off the spool I threw it and all the tapes in the garbage.

I had tape drives installed in all 3 of the computers I owned at the time and didn't have problems with the tape coming off the spool but recovering files from one of those tape drives was extremely time consuming and half the time ended up as not recoverable anyway. Junk.

tinmar49 · 10 Sep 2021

My first pc was a socket 7 with a Cyrix 233 processor and 64 Mb ram back in 1997. The hdd was a Quantum Bigfoot 5.25" with an enormous 6.5 Gb, it ran at 4000rpm.

Ghot · 10 Sep 2021

Anyone here old enough to have worked with THIS hard drive??

x509 · 10 Sep 2021

strollin said:

I worked for Shugart Associates in 1975 when their only product was an 8-inch floppy drive. I moved on in 1977, before they got into the hard drive business. Left floppy drives behind and went to work in IBM's hard drive business where I stayed for 20 years.

@strollin

I worked at SA 1979-1982. Part of that time I was working a few blocks away on Scott Boulevard for short-lived Xerox Memory Systems, but we worked closely with Shugart and Century Data Systems in Anaheim, CA.

strollin · 11 Sep 2021

x509 said:

@strollin
I worked at SA 1979-1982. Part of that time I was working a few blocks away on Scott Boulevard for short-lived Xerox Memory Systems, but we worked closely with Shugart and Century Data Systems in Anaheim, CA.

As I recall Xerox bought SA shortly after I left the company. The facility on Scott Blvd was a new one built specifically for SA that we had moved into from the original location off of Maude Ave.