Former Disk Costs (was: 32 bit Macs (was Atari hard ))

From: Jack Peacock <peacock_at_simconv.com>
Date: Sat Jun 6 19:14:11 1998

>> I recently came across an old invoice for a hard drive I had bought.
This
was mail-order from a wholesaler, in 1993. $287 got me a Maxtor 213MB
SCSI
drive. Which is a little over $1/MB. <<

How about an original Shugart Technology (now Seagate) ST506 drive,
first year they came out? Forget the year now, must have been 1980 or
close to it. It ran me $1500 with a case and power supply, no
controller, all for a gigantic 5MB and a blinding fast 90msec access
time. That would be, oh, about US$300/MB. That much gets you an 18GB
disk these days. I used a Konan controller connected to my IMSAI,
development for Z80 code and BIOS device drivers for CP/M v3 and MP/M.

I still have that drive, though it doesn't read/write so well now, but
the head still moves ok. The IMSAI has had many a MFM drive since those
days, the Konan (not very good) was replaced by an SDS VersaFloppy III,
and it's due for an upgrade to a 3.5" Tandon 20MB in the near future. I
plan to mount it on a prototype card inside the chassis and eliminate a
cabinet. Maybe even 3.5" floppy if I can find some 720K drives.

For all you purists who want to keep machines original, what do you do
when the machine in question isn't retired yet, and there are 20 years
worth of upgrades installed? I figure that old IMSAI will be running
for another 5-10 years yet, cranking out the occasional Z80 program.
        Jack Peacock
Received on Sat Jun 06 1998 - 19:14:11 BST