Posted on 06/26/2024 1:20:17 PM PDT by Red Badger
The IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) marked the pinnacle of 14-inch disks in 1981. Utilizing nine platters, it broke the 1 gigabyte barrier with a total capacity of 1,260 MB and ultimately reached 2.52 GB when two HDAs were paired. A three-capacity version was offered in 1987.
The IBM 3380 was revolutionary not just for its storage capacity but also for its impact on the data storage industry. It represented a significant leap in technology, providing businesses with unprecedented storage capabilities that were essential for the growing demands of data processing in the 1980s.
One HDA (as pictured) cost approximately $50,000, weighed 64 pounds, and the set was stored in the largest cabinet ever used for disks, measuring one meter wide, one meter deep, and two meters high. The IBM 3380 offered customers the ability to store "up to 2.52 billion characters of information," which was four times the amount previous IBM storage devices were capable of. This came at a hefty cost.
The IBM 3380 was available in different models with various feature sets depending on customer requirements (e.g., control functions and fixed head technology). Based on those requirements, IBM 3380 storage devices were sold for $97,000 to $142,000 each, in 1980s dollars. The high cost of the IBM drive was justified by the substantial increase in storage capacity it provided. It played a crucial role in industries that required large-scale data storage, such as banking, telecommunications, and scientific research.
By 1991, IBM had squeezed 1 GB into the 3.5-inch, eight-platter 0663 Corsair HDD, and by 2018, you could purchase a 16 TB 3.5-inch Seagate hard drive off the shelf, which equates to the storage space of more than 10,000 IBM 3380 HDAs.
I remember when I upgraded my Macintosh SE (2 3.5” floppy drives) with a 30MB hard disk from Seagate. My friend said I was “crazy.” “You are NEVER going to fill it!”
My first PC hard drive was 40MB. Then I found out that by swapping out the MFM drive controller for RLL I could boost the capacity to 60MB. That was a lot of space back when the OS would fit on a few floppy disks.
That’s about what I paid for my first HDD. $3,000.00! 10 MB.
Man what a kick in the head.
Data backups aren’t the issue here.
The dealers are trying to process NEW transactions, but they can’t because they system is down.
And it turns out that this is more than just no processing of new car sales, used car sales, leases, maintenance, repairs, warranty work.
Also, the connection to the software on the car so the dealer can diagnose and update - that’s also down in many cases.
Gotcha beat. IBM RAMAC 305. IIt had 50 24 inch platters and about 4.8 million A/N (alpha numeric, for those of you that don’t remember) ) characters.Also worked with IBM 1401s
using word mark programming and later, IBM 370-165s and 185s with 3.5 in chilled water mains for cooling. Those were the good old days!
My first pc had a 40MB HD, probably early 90’s and a blistering 14.4K modem
And to think I was feeling old because I remember when Hard Drives broke the $1 per MB of storage threshold.
I also have two external hard drives that each will fit into a pocket of my cargo shorts. Each one is 4 terabytes. Minus space for operating systems, I have over 8 terabytes at my disposal.
Who knows what’s going to be available in the next 20-30 years?
Advice Needed: Does this look like a good deal to you all?
Can I maybe do better if I wait a few months? .... A few years? .... 20 years? .... 30 years?
Sorry it's so wrinkled. It was wrapped around one of the cups in a box in my basement.
>Who knows what’s going to be available in the next 20-30 years?
The way the world is headed, the abacus
Eli was in a cubicle across the hall when I was at Intel.
https://computerhistory.org/profile/eli-harari/
I never had one of those, or even seen one like that.
a friend in the early 80s bought a 5mb hd for his apple ][ so that games would load runner faster.
so much different today, It does not seem so long ago that I spent way too much money building a nas with 5x3 tb hd with software raid 5 cause hardware raid is total eventual failure
today I have a bunch of e1.s drives
https://www.storagereview.com/review/sk-hynix-pe8110-e1-s-ssd-hands-on
and more cores than you could possibly imagine 20 years ago
I have a coworker that might has one of those drives, I will ask him next time I see him. probably 20% odds.
one of the non current co-worker female hoarder ones that worked for DEC in the 80s probably does.
First Novell server I worked on back in the 90’s was the size of a dorm refrigerator and was 500 MB. It was screaming.
It looks like the size of a VW engine.
Looks like a concrete saw in drag.
Caption: "The storage capacity of the original 8414 series is 7.5MB per disc pack. Our drives (1970s, 8425 series) can already store 50MB. For that time, this was an incredible size"
Here is the the read head assembly. (Not a happy day if you had a read head tracking failure! )
Caption: "The disc heads are amazingly big. The moving coil (on the left hand) plunges into an heavy pot magnet (not visible in the picture) and thus moves the complete slide on it's position. Therefore it works just as an ordinary loudspeaker, but the moving masses are much higher. The predecessor still moved the sled pneumatically. There is a bottle of wine in the right hand of the picture for comparison. "
(Link: https://www.technikum29.de/en/devices/univac9400/discdrives.php)
Gads, the SX systems were such a rip off. Intel was getting to many failures in QA of the math co-processors, so they disabled them, and marked them as “SX” chips.
Start your platters is right! Our VAX mainframe utilized dual 160mb external hard drives, each in dishwasher-sized cabinets, requiring 220 power. Spinning up those babies, you had the distinct impression of power as the rpms increased, making one heck of a low-to-high pitched whine. The mainframe & the drives required an air-conditioned cold room.
A few years later, we tried to donate that old equipment to a high school or a tech school. No one wanted it. I ended up dismantling the VAX piece by piece so it was light enough to be tossed in the 20-foot building dumpster. I saved the “pizza oven” tape drive for a while but eventually it got tossed, too.
I was heading the IT shop of a company that had about a hundred PCs, when the owner sent me with a blank check to a local store advertising 440MB WD drives for $439.99, with orders to buy all they had! I came back with a dozen, and a promise they’d call if they got more.
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