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Hard Drive turns 50yo!

Unfortunately, that article reminded me that my first hard drive (20 MB) cost $1500.00 in 1985 dollars. It was another $1500 for the computer without the disk drive (a Leading Edge - think it was a 10 mhz or 12 mhz, can't remember). Man, that's like spending 10,000 on a computer nowadays, no wonder it's a painful memory.
 
Disks

Disks

I started working in mainframe computer service back in the verrrry early sixties. We still used tubes. Relays. Magnetorestrictive delay line memories. punch cards, mercury delay lines. We sat with our faces nearly resting on TekTronic ocilloscopes looking for that failed descrete component! One of big blues tube computers (705 II) had it silver plated power buss runs carrying 300 VDC adjacent to a ground buss. Under certain conditions, a tiny trail of silver alloy would "migrate" towards an attractive buss. Poof!! Big flash. The system would go down.

Many of the original disk drives from later in the sixties (IBM 2311, 2314s) used hydraulic actuators to position the head array. A 210 PSI positive displacement (gear) pump which could move the heads pretty quickly.

Later, a company called ISS sucessfully developed and marketed a linear motor actuator system, (aka voice-coil) forcing big blue to get modern. So IBM finally came out with the 3330. etc, etc. Only point I'm trying to make; modern disks are just refinements of earlier work. The 3380 was built on knowledge developed with the 305 Ramac.
 
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