[sdiy] Real cause of DIY death

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Tuesday 19 July 2005 12:20 am, John L Marshall wrote:
> <snip>
>
> >> :) f) staring (afraid to even *touch it*) when Seagate brought in a *9
> >> platter* 1GB hard drive. We had to sign an 'evaluation' PO (you break
> >> it, you buy it) for $8000. It took over 16 hours just to format it. When
> >> we did the DOS Dir and saw over 1GB of storage, there were about 22
> >> people in the lab, just *staring*. No one said anything, we just *stared*
> >> like it had dropped out of a space ship.
> >
> > Heh.  I have,  somewhere around here,  a couple of 1G SCSI drives,  and
> > those suckers are *huge*.  5-1/4" FH form factor,  dunno how many platters
> > in it or which of the two is good and which ain't -- I was told one of
> > them still works.  Hardly seems worth bothering with these days...
>
> </snip>
>
> My first hard disk drive was 10 MB, 8 inch, made by Shugart, SASI
> interface, 40 pins.

I have a Bigboard II with a SASI connector on it -- 50 pins.  That's a 
z80-based machine.  :-)   I *might* be able to make something SCSI work on 
that connector,  if I wanted to sit down and write a device driver for it...

> SASI later grew up to become SCSI.Oh...... the floppy drive a dual 8 inch
> drive made by Persci. I had to talk with Gary Kildall to get some hints for
> writing a device driver for the Persci. It had a single voice coil head
> positioner for both drives.

I have one of those drives in a Cromemco System 3.  It's non-functional,  
perhaps due to them using _incandescent_ bulbs all over the place for things 
like the index sensor,  etc.  When I got that machine there was a floppy in 
there which had been tried so much they wore the oxide clean off at the 
location of the first track,  so you could see through it!

I really oughta fix that thing one of these days,  but need to make an 
extension for the power connection in order for me to do so,  and it's some 
weird nonstandard connector...