A place to discuss the world of Wapsi Square
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Be glad you never had to deal with FastRand.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
Largest I ever physically worked with was about a third the size of a washing machine, didn't shake, and had a pair of 10-meg platters - one fixed, one removable. The case the removable platter was (permanently) in was about a foot and a half across.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
Not just wobbling either. You're used to a drive booting up without making any noise. I almost wonder if my drive has gone dead sometimes because it doesn't make that noise, because I grew up with it.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
As well you should. The motors which moved the arm assemblies back and forth across the layers of players, were bigger and heavier than most of today's entire disk drives.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
I actually remember that sound!ShneekeyTheLost wrote:Not just wobbling either. You're used to a drive booting up without making any noise. I almost wonder if my drive has gone dead sometimes because it doesn't make that noise, because I grew up with it.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
Then again, there's some people who have done some interesting things with that.
A childhood memory from the dying days of Compaq, but I remember!AnotherFairportfan wrote:Drum memory was almost as good at storing data as it was at storing angular momentum.
DEC RK05, or Control Data 9427 H Hawk drive. I taught repair procedures on both of them - still have my tools around here somewhere.Warrl wrote:Largest I ever physically worked with was about a third the size of a washing machine, didn't shake, and had a pair of 10-meg platters - one fixed, one removable. The case the removable platter was (permanently) in was about a foot and a half across.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
Now the problem with removable storage is that it's too small. There's no room to label even an SD card, let alone a microSD card. And if you drop the latter, good luck finding it again.
Dave wrote:As well you should. The motors which moved the arm assemblies back and forth across the layers of players, were bigger and heavier than most of today's entire disk drives.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
There was a story, at a school district computer center where I worked for a while, about an accident involving one of those big drives. It was undergoing a maintenance alignment of some sort... spinning, with the protective top cover in the open position... when the technician dropped some ash from his cigar into it (this was back in the day before no-smoking regulations, and perhaps before common sense had evolved past the amphibious stage). The central bearing siezed, and the rotating torque of the disk threw the disc across the room like a flying guillotine.
Probably too good a story to be literally true, but like many such it contains a kernel of truth. Those disk packs weren't light... half a dozen rigid aluminum platters 14" in diameter, spinning at about 1800 RPM. When in operation they needed to be treated like the industrial devices that they were.
Sometimes, fixed-head disks were used... trading off capacity and cost and electrical complexity for faster access. One system I used in college had a RAD which was used entirely as a swap device... a full-sized cabinet, with about as much memory capacity as exists in the on-chip L3 cache of a modern CPU.
FASTRand, which i've mentioned, was basically a section of sewer pipe, filled with concrete and coated with oxide.AnotherFairportfan wrote:Dave wrote:As well you should. The motors which moved the arm assemblies back and forth across the layers of players, were bigger and heavier than most of today's entire disk drives.GlytchMeister wrote:*shudders*
Washing machine-sized drives that wobbled like washing machines.
*shakes head*
There was a story, at a school district computer center where I worked for a while, about an accident involving one of those big drives. It was undergoing a maintenance alignment of some sort... spinning, with the protective top cover in the open position... when the technician dropped some ash from his cigar into it (this was back in the day before no-smoking regulations, and perhaps before common sense had evolved past the amphibious stage). The central bearing siezed, and the rotating torque of the disk threw the disc across the room like a flying guillotine.
Probably too good a story to be literally true, but like many such it contains a kernel of truth. Those disk packs weren't light... half a dozen rigid aluminum platters 14" in diameter, spinning at about 1800 RPM. When in operation they needed to be treated like the industrial devices that they were.
Sometimes, fixed-head disks were used... trading off capacity and cost and electrical complexity for faster access. One system I used in college had a RAD which was used entirely as a swap device... a full-sized cabinet, with about as much memory capacity as exists in the on-chip L3 cache of a modern CPU.
andThe large mass of the rotating drum caused gyroscopic precession of the unit, making it tend to spin on the computer room floor as the Earth rotated under it. Very few of these devices were delivered.
Specs:The Fastrands were very heavy (5,000 pounds) and large, approximately 8' long. Due to their weight, FASTRAND units were usually not installed on "false floor", and required special rigging and mounts to move and/or install. There were reported cases of drum bearing failures that caused the machine to tear itself apart and send the heavy drum crashing through walls*.
{The BLS CIP Inflation Calculator says that$176,000 in 1968 is roughly $1,271,000 today.}.Specifications (FASTRAND II)
Storage capacity: 22,020,096 36-bit words = 132,120,576 6-bit FIELDATA characters = 99 megabytes (8-bit bytes) per device
Drum rotation rate: 880 RPM (14.7 rotations per second)
Heads: 64
Sector size: 28 36-bit words
Track size: 64 sectors (1,792 36-bit words)
Track density: 105 tracks per inch
Average Access time (seek time plus rotational latency): 92 milliseconds
Data transfer rate: 26,283 36-bit words per second = 118 kilobytes per second (8-bit bytes) on 1100 series machines
Recording density, one-dimensional: 1,000 bits per inch (along one track)
Recording density, two-dimensional: 105,000 bits per square inch of drum surface
Max FASTRAND devices (drum units) per controller: 8
Controller price: $41,680 (1968 dollars)
FASTRAND device price: $134,400 (1968 dollars)
Weight per FASTRAND device: 4,500 pounds
Weight per kilobyte: 6 ounces (170 g)
Clever, but often not very wise at all.GlytchMeister wrote:Humans are one dumb species sometimes.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." - KDave wrote:Clever, but often not very wise at all.GlytchMeister wrote:Humans are one dumb species sometimes.