IBM 3380 disk drives / info?

From: Bob Brown <bbrown_at_harper.cc.il.us>
Date: Mon Mar 19 09:11:34 2001

3380's were a product of the 80's. There were several different
flavors...the originals came out in the early
80's. They were known as A0's or AA's. or AD's. They were 'single
density'...each hda had two addressable
actuators (one coming out each side)...each actuator addressed about 600MB
of storage.

They later came out with AE's which were double density...then J's and K's
which were trible density.

Did you happen to grab the magnets from the cabinets? VERY powerful
permanent magnets indeed! (very heavy too).

I have a 3380 HDA I saved from my mainframe days...had a MAJOR
headcrash....when I opened up the top to look, the
head that crashed was vaporized!

-Bob


At 08:59 PM 3/18/2001 -0500, you wrote:
> Among my pickups over the weekend were a pair of these HUGE IBM
>3380 drives. Couldn't even begin to find room for the entire unit with
>its
>cabinet and controllers, but did scavange the drives and motors out of
>the cabinet. Biggest drive I've ever seen. Belt driven! from an external
>1.5
>HP motor ..these things are Big! Cast alluminium housing w/14" discs,
>the whole assembly seems about 1/2 the size of a V-6 auto eng!
> IBM site has several references to them, circa early 80's I gather
>but they sure look older than that. What I'd like to find is IBM
>publication #GC26-4491 [IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Intro] and/or IBM
>pub #GX26-1678 [Storage Reference Summary]. Neither seems to be in the
>on-line library from IBM.
> Any other info or dating is always welcome too.
> Thanks, Craig
Received on Mon Mar 19 2001 - 09:11:34 GMT