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Hard Disk Storage 1985

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VK3DRB:

--- Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on October 11, 2021, 01:24:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on October 11, 2021, 12:28:56 pm ---
But I go back ever further than that to the Stringy Floppy!!!! I am sure few people here would have ever heard of a stringy floppy.

--- End quote ---

What? I have one in my closet.

--- End quote ---

It might be quite valuable to a collector or as a museum piece. Certainly beat cassette tapes in the day. It could be fun in getting it going, even if you have to design an interface.

All my old stuff is long gone except my FRG-7 (1977); and my Farad-80 scientific calculator (1976) which is on my desk and I still use it.

I adopt the "If in doubt, throw it out" guideline to uncluttered living. That being said, my son's friend threw out an old hard disk that had 20 bitcoins that he mined on it. At the time they were worth about $4. He is kicking himself.

Alex Eisenhut:

--- Quote from: VK3DRB on October 13, 2021, 08:38:45 am ---
It might be quite valuable to a collector or as a museum piece.

--- End quote ---

I know. Wafer drives or stringy floppies are just a endless loop tape in a tiny cartridge.

https://computersmuseum.com/technical/reviews/quick-data-drive/

They fail. My drive could be a shelf queen, right now it's a closet pig.

ferdieCX:
In 1969, Olivetti introduced the Auditronic 770 account machine.
It also used a cyclic tape drive

Link in italian

http://museo.dagomari.prato.it/singolo.php?cod=167&ord=1

helius:
The 1980s "stringy floppy" was a miniaturized endless-reel (like an 8 Track cart) tape device, a cheaper alternative to 5.25" floppy drives for home computers like ZX Spectrums. A similar process led to Mitsui's QuickDisk (QD) format, which could not seek, but simply scanned the whole surface in an endless spiral as it turned.


Long before that, there was an IBM system called the 2321 Data Cell (1964) that used strips of magnetic tape that it fished out of a barrel (it was called "the noodle snatcher" by field service).

Neper:
My first contact with data storage was during my apprenticeship in the offices of a German glass factory, around 1974. Their computer system was an IBM 360 and the head of the computer department let me put the lists of my music tapes on punch cards, so I could sort and print them out in various ways. The cards themselves made a very convenient card file. 

Years later, the first hard drive I didn't buy was an optional one for my DEC Rainbow 100 computer: 7000 deutschmarks for 5 MB. Thanks but no, thanks.

The first one I actually bought was a 20 MB 5 1/4" "half-height" MFM drive (or was it RLL?) for my Amiga 2000: 1200 deutschmarks at the time. Never thought I'd be able to fill that drive. A few months later, it had magically filled up and a 50 MB 3 1/2" hard drive soon followed. Five years later, lightning struck and killed my then Amiga 3000. The insurance kindly paid for a Amiga 3000T with a drive of mind-boggling capacity: 1 GB! Never thought I'd be able to fill that. A few months later...

Today, I couldn't even say how many drives with how much capacity are running in this place. Yet, I'll need a few more soon.

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