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This is the first hard drive made. It is a whopping 5MB in size, funny thing is that even though drive sizes have increased tremendously the underlying technology is surprisingly similar…
“Information is stored, magnetically, on fifty disks which rotate at 1200 rpm. These disks are mounted so as to rotate about a vertical axis, with a spacing of three tenths of an inch between disks. This spacing permits two magnetic heads to be positioned to any one of the 100 concentric tracks which are available on each side of each disk. Each track contains 500 alphanumeric characters. Total storage capacity: 5,000,000 characters. The two recording heads are mounted in a pair of arms which are moved, by a feed-back control system, in a radial direction to straddle a selected disk. This new system promises memory storage possibilities never before accomplished.”
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June 13th, 2006
I am very familiar with this particular piece of equipment, having worked on a restoration of one out in the silicon valley. We have just the disk stack and head mechanism, which alone weigh nearly 400 lbs. It is truly a beast of a machine. One more piece of trivia for you guys, the magnetic material on the disks is an iron oxide paint very similar to what coats the Golden Gate bridge.
http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ramac7150010sh.jpg
http://img107.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ramac7150036rd.jpg
June 14th, 2006
Thats not really that small of a capacity, considering the size of programs then.
June 15th, 2006
Hi germanicus,
Thanks for the pictures. Any videos of the beast in operation by any chance?