On 7/11/2011 23:17, Warp wrote:
>    I don't remember it, but I have been told that such hard drives used to
> be the size of a fridge at some point. (And probably more expensive than
> a car.)

Drums were very big, as Andrew said.

Disk drives when I started were about 80cm wide, a meter or more deep, and 
about chest high. The disks themselves were maybe half a meter diameter, a 
third of a meter tall, had six platters (and top and bottom of course) and 
were heavy enough they were inconvenient to carry with one hand, altho you 
could lift them. Oh, and they held four meg. (We had two drives, a CPU, a 
printer, and one other thing I forget what it was, and each cabinet was 
about that big, except the printer was somewhat bigger because it had to 
hold the 132 paper and all, and the CPU had the card reader and keyboard on 
it as well as the front panel switches.)

Drives for a CP/M machine that could hold 8 meg were the size a color laser 
printer is today.

When the high school finally replaced the old NCR-50 mainframe (such as it 
was) with a PR1ME, the disk drive was in a cabinet literally as big as a 
fridge. However, if you opened it up, the cabinet was empty but for some 
wiring and a disk drive maybe 10cm high. The head of the department couldn't 
stop laughing for about 20 minutes.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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