Sauerer 🐕🐕May 29
nixCraft 🐧
10 MB hard disk from the 1960's
May 29 at 8:58amWeb
Show threaddavecyklMay 29
@nixCraft And you had to flip it over to access the other 5 MB… /s
Show threadCat in ChucksMay 29
@davecykl @nixCraft
No, you didn't. The reading heads were located on both sides. Such a disk was not very visible because it was inside a plastic box. The same disks were used for 5MB and 10MB, by the way. The difference lay in the disk reading/writing system.
Show threaddavecyklMay 29

@CatChucks @nixCraft I honestly did swither as to whether I actually needed to add the sarcasm mark (/s)… 😉

The other little known feature of these disks was that if you set the drive unit rotational speed to 33 rpm rather than 45, you could store an extra 1.5 MB per side… 😙

Show threadCat in ChucksMay 29

@davecykl @nixCraft
You know, many young ones cannot believe in that history… they might get the story directly…

I played with speed, too. 😁

Show threadSuperMoosieMay 29

@davecykl
Remember the fun times in the computer lab, when you go to load your program from the hard drive, but someone has discretely changed the knob from 33prm to 78rpm as a prank.

@CatChucks @nixCraft

Show threadCat in ChucksMay 30

@SuperMoosie @davecykl @nixCraft
Sure. I had to lock the disks in a safe, but there were common ones :)

You've forgotten abut 78/45 rpm 🤣

Show threadReiner JungMay 29
@nixCraft expensive Storage for important work which we nowadays use for one or two cat photos.
Show threadAverage HelperMay 29

@prefec2
naturally. cats are important, after all :3

@nixCraft

Show threadUlrich Auer May 29
@nixCraft 10 MB. Doch schon so viel. https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Zahlen-bitte-3-75-Megabyte-Speicher-Die-erste-Festplatte-der-Welt-10327479.html
Zahlen, bitte! 3,75 Megabyte Speicher - Die erste Festplatte der Welt

1956 wurde mit der IBM 350 die erste Festplatte der Welt veröffentlicht. Als Speicher des RAMAC-Computers hatte sie Platz für 3,75 Megabyte Daten.

heise online
Show threadDavidMay 30

@Macnutzer94 @nixCraft
Great action shot of a 1956 hard drive in a video linked in that article:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oyWsdS1h-TM&t=360

Show threadZeki Çatav 🤔 ☕ 🕯️🎶May 29
@nixCraft Looks like a clutch pressure plate or flywheel😉
Show threadhetougMay 29
@nixCraft in the early '70-ies I used disks like those, but a little smaller in diameter - 19". 4 platters in a removable stack for 30MB. The drive was the size of a washing machine and used 3 phase 400v at 16amps. We had instructions not to turn it on if the temperature was below 19° centigrade as the coating risked flaking off.
Now I have 2TB on a usb-stick 🤔
Show threadMark CrockerMay 29

@hetoug @nixCraft I had a chance to buy one of those cheap in the mid 1980's. What stopped me was the requirement for 240V 3-phase power.

I did buy an old disk wheel printer, that I got working with an assembly program to track the notches on the optical disc sensor and drive the solenoids for the lead screw and hammer, but never got it reliable enough to print more than a sentence or two before an off-by-one count would mess it up. So I doubt I could have gotten the disk to work either.

Show threadFrançois Caron 🇨🇦May 30

@hetoug @nixCraft I now have 1 TB on a microSD card. On a SLIVER of memory!

I started my career working with those bulky drive assemblies. I've lived through this massive progress!

Show thread__Knut_May 29
@nixCraft ...this corresponds to approx. 125 punched cards
Show thread2xfoMay 29
@__Knut_ @nixCraft
I think it's like 8333 punch cards?
Anyway, pretty amazing they found room for ten million holes there
Show thread__Knut_May 29

@RnDanger @nixCraft yes you are right. According to ChatGPT there are 131072 Punch Cards. ( 10.484760 Byte / 80 Byte per Card)

https://chatgpt.com/share/68389c84-2914-8012-9520-aeda6a937a8e

ChatGPT - 酔って候と山内容堂

Shared via ChatGPT

ChatGPT
Show thread2xfoMay 29
@__Knut_ @nixCraft
I got my estimate by looking at the article for punch cards on Wikipedia and dividing 10MB by the number of bytes that fit on a card. My uncertainty comes from not knowing the subject well and i also know the card i got bytes for was an older format.
I would actually expect a smaller number because later formats added more room. This fits with my broader expectation that chatGPT doesn't have a clue and is mostly right only by random chance.
Show threadF4GRX SébastienMay 30
@__Knut_ @RnDanger @nixCraft do you really need chatgpt to divide an integer by 80? What a time to be alive.
Show thread2xfoMay 30

@f4grx @__Knut_ @nixCraft

I keep thinking about that movie Idiocracy in regards to AI

Pvt. Joe Bowers: [addressing Congress] "... And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!"

Show threadXCMMay 29
@nixCraft
“And this, boys and girls, is how we played video games back in the day”
Show threadStanleyHOOTZZMay 29
@nixCraft
"BIC" lighters had not been invented yet. LOL's
Show threadWaglagonMay 29
@nixCraft Pulling this disk to take a picture is what caused one of the Newark radar outages.
Show threadPetra van CronenburgMay 29
@waglagon 😂 @nixCraft
Show threadAdabei der AndereMay 29
@nixCraft
Ich nutze diese Scheiben in meiner Kreissäge 😜
Show thread^[[200~MichaelMay 29
@nixCraft everyone please stick to text-only comments as we're running out of disk space
Show threadTurreMay 29
@nixCraft Seeing that, it's not so hard to imagine the legend about operators running contests on who can make a disk stack walk furthest by deliberately introducing vibrations from disk arm movement.
Show threadllewellyMay 29

@Turre @nixCraft

Novice: Make disk drive walk a specified distance

Mediocre: Make disk drive walk a circle of arbitrary radius

Expert: Make disk drive walk the path of the function r = α + βsin(γθ) for arbitrary α, β, and γ , in polar coordinates.

Show threadTarknassusMay 29
@nixCraft 100mb Winchester drive that was probably the first ever hard drive I saw as a kid. One of these bad boys powered our entire BBC Micro school network... At a time when my school homework could be carried on a 5.25" floppy too.
Show threadAlbert HickeyMay 29

@tarknassus @nixCraft

I loved having floppies. Felt personal and like a collection.

Suppose same nostalgia for CDs

Digital is invisible.

Show threadTarknassusMay 29
@winkleink @nixCraft I’ve been considering using Minidisc as a storage medium that can hold a decent amount…
Show threadVenc DvorakMay 29
@nixCraft Those were the times when things were really Great 😂
Show threadGraeme 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿May 29
@nixCraft I remember one of those. Had to run in a clean air cooled room, with the pdp-10 it was attached to!
Show threadPetra van CronenburgMay 29

@nixCraft And today, 65 yrs later, computer scientists count with qubits ... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241111123405.htm and this looks more like a big washing machine 😉 https://www.sharetechnote.com/html/QC/QuantumComputing_HW_Structure.html

#computers #quantumComputing

Compact error correction: Towards a more efficient quantum 'hard drive'

Two quantum information theorists have solved a decades-old problem that will free up quantum computing power.

ScienceDaily
Show threadVitlöksbjörnMay 29

@nixCraft this bad boy can fit 3 entire mp3s on it

with low enough bitrate that is

Show threadnoplasticshowerMay 29
@nixCraft remember walking the drive?
Show threadDean WamplerMay 29
@nixCraft They just don't make 'em like they used to! Sad!! 🤓
Show threadCapricious DayMay 29

@nixCraft *slaps hard disk*

this baby will store an entire desktop background

Show threadatlovatoMay 29
@nixCraft - WOW; Now that is huge.
Show threadJon LunmanMay 29
@nixCraft You could *almost* fit a React web app on that thing!
Show threadMarcantonio RendinoMay 29
@nixCraft back then, we counted every blessed bit
Show threadCoqMay 29
@nixCraft
Yeah, many of them can be used to install discord and talk about it.
Show thread"The Rainbow Beast" Full Metal ArchaeopteryxMay 29

@nixCraft
In the mid-1980's, that disc had shrunk down to 18"

I had the dubious pleasure of being one of the people who replaced them and their read/write heads on a monthly basis (until I convinced the powers-that-were that smoking in the labs was costing time and money)

Show thread2¢May 29
@nixCraft I recall using IBM 2311s. I think they each had a capacity of 5 MB but they were stacks of platters. The 2314s doubled (?) that. And the 3330 packs, IIRC, had 100MB capacity in the late '70s.
Show thread/mərˈkjʊriəl/May 29
@nixCraft wow, MB?

I'm just looking at my downloads folder and a single random png alone was like 13 MB
Show threadRejZoRMay 29

@nixCraft I remember when I had ultra fast 3.5" 4GB SCSI HDD drive back around 1999. Now I have a 4TB NVMe SSD that's like 1/50th in size, 1000x larger as well as over 150x faster.

Or comparing floppy disks to casual 256GB USB thumbdrive...

It's pretty crazy how far we have come. And NAND storage is the greatest jump we've had in several decades. We've had spinning rust for basically half a century, move to non mechanical storage was a huge technological advancement.

Show threadRejZoRMay 29
@nixCraft Next largest advancement will be unification of working memory and storage memory within memory that has speed and access times of RAM but is non-volatile. No more storage capacity issues and no more copying of data between storage and working memory, just direct execution. That will be wild.
Show threadRay CarpenterMay 29
@nixCraft Damn, I remember those! 😉 And Fastrand drums! 😉
Show threadRome0May 29
@nixCraft Holy Shit, That hard drive platter looks like a Pho-king sawblade!
Show threadKevin TrainorMay 29
@nixCraft Gives a whole new insight to the term “hard drive”.
Show threadEdMay 29
@nixCraft I've had spare tires for cars that were smaller than that.
Show threadvramvoolenaarMay 29
@EdCates @nixCraft
top speed of 40 MB/s?
Show threadAuraniMay 29

@nixCraft update the disk to using modern techniques, so it stores infinitely more space. Then fix it into a cabinet with clear sides; like those old reel to reel style ones.

Then line up a stack of those against a wall, and you've got a bitchin' start to a lair.

Show thread𝙳𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚎 𝙼𝚒𝚌𝚌𝚒 🇪🇺May 29
@nixCraft .. not to talk about the keyboard! 🥶 #justjoking
Show threadHolgintheairMay 29

@nixCraft

Is that from the famous Winchester?

Show threadllewellyMay 29
@nixCraft all my life I thought that was a hat intended to be worn when officiating religious ceremonies.
Show threadLin ChiaoMay 29
@nixCraft 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Show threadchiasmMay 29
@nixCraft pretty sure I saw some of those still in use on the 80's, and impressive to see...