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What kind of HDD is this? It's humungous!

O

olePigeon

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Assuming it's a HDD and not a motor or pump or something. Found this at my local computer recycler. This thing is HUGE. It's about the size of an old AT PC case, and I'd estimate it weighs close 30 pounds. It's that big. Come to think of it, I should have shot some pictures for size reference. Sorry. Maybe one of you guys have seen one. You can see a large KVM switch in the background of one of the pictures. Unfortunately there aren't any serial numbers or anything useful for identification.

It is placed next to an 8" floppy drive, so it looks like it could have fit in a similar size enclosure if it were just one of these things instead of 2x 8" floppy drives stacked on to above one another.

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I used to have one a little bit bigger than that out of a sperry or maybe burrows mini or mainframe. I worked at unisys at the time and it was in the back storeroom forgotten for many years before I found it. I think my friend still has it.

Later,
dabone
 
However, they do have a work area on which I can test the drive. The pins are bent, but I think I could bend them back. I'd be curious in seeing if it even works. :) Would be fun. Think it could be ATA or MFM?
 
Here's an IMI (Corvus) 7710, 11MB, 9"x19", only 22lbs since the cover is plastic; neat to see it in action though. 30GB 2 1/2" for comparison:
IMI7710.JPG
 
Not ATA or MFM. SCSI (or SASI) might be possible but more likely one of the minicomputer or mainframe specialty ribbon cables. Power connector would have been interesting to see. I know the older DEC systems (about 1980) that had hard drives incorporated similar* connectors on their drives but none of the drives I could track down images of match the drive in the initial images.

* 30 year memories plus blurry photo means I can't tell if the pin count is the same. Though if it is the drive I am thinking of, it would have a capacity in the range of hundreds of megabytes up to a few gigabytes.
 
olePigeon said:
However, they do have a work area on which I can test the drive. The pins are bent, but I think I could bend them back. I'd be curious in seeing if it even works. :) Would be fun. Think it could be ATA or MFM?
Click to expand...

Not likely. At best, perhaps SMD or SA4000-type.

What bothers me is that it's not complete. I'm not entire certain that it includes the spindle motor. So, it's a pretty piece of e-waste, but probably not much more.

I've still got my Shugard SA4004 - 14"--and it works.
 
Chuck's right, it isn't complete. I have one very similar, if not identical, but it has more to it attached as a bottom layer of sorts, possibly containing the spindle motor he referred to. I found it in a large mainframe unit that came with a lot of computers purchased in a gov't surplus auction from NASA, who seldom let a hard drive get past them, but until the unit was taken apart you'd have no clue it was there. As I was dismantling it, having no clue as to even what it was, I just knew on sight it looked like a giant hard drive. I later saw one or two in auctions on Ebay around 2003-4 and they usually sold for around $50+S&H, and weigh about 30-35 pounds. They had a metal tag on them with a name and number, reminiscent of the tag on a differential or old carberator, attached to one of the assembly screws/bolts. I took the cover off of mine to see inside (haha) and laid the tag aside, and it was misplaced for a time, but later found it, and put it somewhere I'd always know where it was (welp, it's still there, wherever that place is ; ) It has 7 - 8" platters.

http://s1205.photobucket.com/albums/bb426/Le_Bear/old%20hard%20drive/
 
Hey! it's one of those!
I have one too. I recovered it from the university when they started closing up all the electronics labs to make room for more garbage trades.

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Mine had no motor as well and yes, it had been opened before I got it. There's an HP part number on it however I can track back to a random place on the internet that mention it was a 504mb hard disk drive.
 
A set of videos of what a complete 8" drive would look like is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfskSzKBnWA and related videos. The RA-82 is DEC's equivalent but the shell that surrounds the platters is similar and you can see some of the motor and cabling connections. It was a fun nostoglia trip for me.
 
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NeXT said:
Mine had no motor as well and yes, it had been opened before I got it. There's an HP part number on it however I can track back to a random place on the internet that mention it was a 504mb hard disk drive.
Click to expand...

The motor is separate and is connected to the head/disk assembly by a belt.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=394

The 7936 and 7937 were the next generation of HP system discs to replace the "washtub" discs of the 793X range. The 7936 had a capacity of 371 MB and the 7937 had a capacity of 571 MB. Seek time was 20ms with a burst transfer rate of 2.35 MB/s. The initial models (7936H and 7937H) came with an HP-IB interface. The 7936XP and 7937XP offered an addition 2 MB cache. The subsequent 7937F offered a fibre channel interface.

The 7936/37 used the CS/80 command set.

7936.jpg
 
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