General > General Technical Chat
Hard Disk Storage 1985
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rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: AaronLee on October 03, 2021, 10:25:53 am ---The original Macs were not a well designed product, from a software standpoint, IMHO. I worked a lot on Apple II and some on Apple III products and was quite excited when the Mac first came out, given it was a huge leap from the PC and standard computers of the day. My enthusiasm quickly changed to disdain for the company and their products though when I saw the horrible mess that was the original Mac OS. It was totally filled with bugs and released way too prematurely, but I assume management (Steve Jobs most likely) pushed it through anyways. As a software developer, you had to run through hoops to get around all the bugs and non-working functions. Many users likely never even knew how horrible the OS was under the hood, but developers certainly did.
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Although the Mac OS prior to version 10 (or "X") was interesting under some aspects, when I used its version 9 it was terribly outdated  technologically when compared to Microsoft and Linux offers of the time.

But even the Apple II original was very interesting but I couldn't get past its fringe colors around its white pixels - something fixed in later revisions of the hardware. Those versions really looked better in a monochrome monitor. Otherwise, it was a very decent product at its prime.


--- Quote from: AaronLee on October 03, 2021, 10:25:53 am ---Well, Steve Jobs, a man who many think was brilliant, some who even consider him almost a god, was someone I couldn't stand and I never understood one bit all the hype and praise given to him.

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Chuck Peddle used to say that Steve Jobs was given more praise than he deserved, while Bill Gates was villanized more than he deserved.
Alex Eisenhut:

--- Quote from: joeqsmith on October 03, 2021, 03:35:06 pm ---First couple of minutes of this video I show some of my old drives.  One is an old 2G full height single ended SCSI drive.  Cost on these is something better forgotten.    :-DD



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Sweet! If ads in the back of old computer magazines are reliable, something like a 1-2G HDD back in the late 80s and early 90s would have been in the 3000$ range. I wonder how many HDs were specced in their unformatted capacity though. Is 1G unformatted the same as 676M formatted?

From what I see they would have been used for mastering CDs, editing videos and special effects.

Nothing like the 20-60MB hard drives the average consumer would have even considered buying.
ozcar:

--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on October 03, 2021, 11:39:46 am ---A 5-Mb Hard-Drive being loaded onto a Pan Am flight, in 1956 !!!   :palm:



Evidently, today it could store just one hi-res iPhone picture.
It was available for 'Rent', at about $3,500 per Month...

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That device was the heart of a system dubbed "RAMAC" by IBM in 1956. You can see the disk in operation here: .

Note how the read mechanism has to not only move in and out to the desired track, but also vertically to the required surface. Another highlight of that video to me is the point where they speak in glowing terms of the "wired control panel", and then proceed to open what looks like a trash can filled with a tangle of scrap cables.

I have seen that photo before somewhere. It reminded me of when the place where I was working in the early '70s ordered their first "System 370" machine. It was a model 155, which was the last IBM mainframe to have a "face" with hundreds of little lights in rows, and I think also their last mainframe to use magnetic core storage. When it was being unloaded at the airport, part of it was dropped off a forklift and pretty badly damaged. They managed to pull the heavy metal frame back into shape, and got it working, but if you knew where to look you could always see the kinks in the frame.
james_s:

--- Quote from: AaronLee on October 03, 2021, 10:25:53 am ---Well, Steve Jobs, a man who many think was brilliant, some who even consider him almost a god, was someone I couldn't stand and I never understood one bit all the hype and praise given to him. He's long gone now though, and last year I decided to give Apple another chance, with the release of their M1 Mac, and have to say I'm impressed, especially from the standpoint of value for one's money in terms of speed, at least value compared to previous generation Macs. I still prefer PCs running Windows, given that's where I've invested most of my efforts and is the only environment capable of running lots of the apps I require. But for audio, video, and other creative type apps, I think Mac is the preferred platform.

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I don't think I would have enjoyed being around Jobs, but it is undeniable that he was extremely talented. Not so much as an engineer, but as a salesman. Also his extreme attention to detail is largely what made Apple products as good as they were. Just comparing iOS 6 to iOS 7 demonstrates this, 6 was extremely polished, consistent and reliable, 7 was a disjointed mess. They've had a mix of pretty good releases and turds in the meantime.

I was never a Mac guy back in the day, but today when I compare a Mac from say 1989 to a PC of the same era there is no comparison. The Mac while more expensive was so far ahead it's not even funny. 32 bit CPU, plug & play NuBus cards with no configuration jumpers, built in SCSI, high resolution (for the time) color video that could automatically detect the capabilities of the monitor that was connected. A standardized peripheral bus (ADB) many years before USB was developed. Built in networking in the form of AppleTalk, built in 8 bit digital audio. Luxurious feeling floppy drives with electric eject, nice clean tool-free cases where most of the components just click into place with very few screws even internally. Unfortunately this all came at a cost, and a machine like the Mac II was exorbitantly expensive, several times the price of a typical 286 PC of the era and had a more limited software library. Steve Jobs at one point declared that "The Macintosh is not a toy" and did not actively pursue games, a huge mistake in my opinion because everyone knows that the vast majority of home computers while ostensibly good for all sorts of productive tasks, spent most of their time running games, and games are to this day what drives a lot of the upgrading.
james_s:

--- Quote from: CJay on October 03, 2021, 09:50:33 am ---Heh, ran a BBS from an Amiga and then later a PC with a pair of Maxtor XT4380S drives

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My friend ran a BBS on an enormous Pentium 60, I remember the case had casters on it and was about a foot wide and 3 feet tall and had a couple of those 1GB drives in it. I think he eventually retired that machine and gave me one of the drives, which is where the one I have probably came from.
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