Subject: SMD disk drive

From: Jim Donoghue <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 08:49:13 2003

I'm looking for an 8" SMD disk drive. The only ones I've seen were made
by NEC - and I can't seem to find any. What other companies made these
kind of drives? Any suggestions on where I should look or what (other)
kinds of equipment these were used in? (besides Wang minicomputers)

-- 
Jim Donoghue
Smithy Co.
(734) 913-6700

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From: "Bruce Lane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 09:57:17 2003

Hey, Jim,

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

>kinds of equipment these were used in? (besides Wang minicomputers)

	Well, lesseee.... Those were also made by Fujitsu, Control Data, and (I recall) Shugart and Century Data. Of those, Fujitsu is the most common in the surplus arena.

	They were often used in high-end engineering workstations, such as those done by Tektronix, HP, and others. Come to think of it, a buddy of mine has a bunch of SMD drives in just that form factor, and I think he's looking to get rid of stuff. E-mail me a private note with details of what you're looking for in terms of capacity, and I will forward it to him.

	Keep the peace(es).

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com
ARS KC7GR (Formerly WD6EOS) since 12-77 -- [email-masked]
"I'll get a life when someone demonstrates that it would be superior
to what I have now..." (Taki Kogoma, aka Gym Z. Quirk)

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From: Joe <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 10:16:09 2003

I found some in some kind of telephone equipment a couple of years ago. I think they were either NEC or Fujitsu but it's been a while.

   Joe

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From: Jim Donoghue <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 10:47:20 2003

On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 10:36, Jochen Kunz wrote:

> 
> On the other side: What is wrong with NEC? I have some 1GB 9" NEC SMD
> drives. Very solid and reliable. 
> -- 
>

Nothing wrong with them. I just can't seem to find them anymore, and
wanted to make a 'list' of other things to look for...
 
-- 
Jim Donoghue
Smithy Co.
(734) 913-6700

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From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 4 12:36:56 2003

--- Jim Donoghue <[email-masked]> wrote:
> kind of drives?

Fujitsu made lots of SMD drives.  I have several.  They are not so small.
I have 14" and 10" units, ranging from 160MB to 400MB.

Coming from the DEC world, when SMD was in fashion there, 8" drives were
not, especially since the racks would hold 14" drives. If you were
going to spend the $$$, you might as well get some capacity for the
effort.

There are also some higher-capacity 5.25" SMD drives, but IIRC, they
use a different clock frequency and are not always compatible with
older controllers.  I remember a 600MB model selling for $600 in a
day when PeeCee storage was several times that (like $5-$10/meg).  The
sellers were careful to warn people that these would *not* plug into
an ISA machine without an expensive and rare controller.  I did not
buy one.  :-)

-ethan

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From: Tom Uban <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 4 12:36:59 2003

CDC also made some. I think that the Sabre might be one of the models...

--tom

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From: Jochen Kunz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 4 12:37:13 2003

On 2003.04.03 16:35 Jim Donoghue wrote:

> I'm looking for an 8" SMD disk drive. The only ones I've seen were
> made by NEC - and I can't seem to find any. What other companies made 
> these kind of drives? 
Fujitsu made a series of 8" SMD drives in the range from some MB to
around 1 GB. Once uppon a time I we had a Sequent Symetry S27 at the
Unix-AG with three Fujitsu M22??K 8" drives. They had 600 to 700 MB. The
former owner of the machine instructed me to reformat the drives at
least once a year, as they loose the format information leeding to lost
data. A friend has some other Fujitsu drives from that series. He
reported that this drives are quite unreliable. 

Seagate made some 8" SMD drives. The quick specs where on
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/ when I looked at them last time.
Seagate made 5,25" SMD drives too. The one I have is ether a st41097j or
st41201j, it has 1 GB and I can't use it as I have no docs. (Power
connector pinout, DIP switch description, ...) Very, very sad. This
would be a very nice disk for one of my VAXen or PDP-11s. 

I own a Hitachi DK514S also. 360 MB, 5,25" FH, SMD. So maybe Hitachi
made 8" models too. 

tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

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From: Tom Uban <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu May 8 23:54:36 2003

Hi Ethan,

If you are going to the Hamvention, would you please look for a set (or two)
of SMD drive cables for me? I won't be able to go this year as work has me
out in Boston. I am looking for one or two cable sets, each 10' to 25' in
length. They are often made of a twisted pair 60pin ribbon, and a shielded
26pin ribbon, but are sometimes in a round shielded cable as well. I would be
willing to pay up to $30 for each pair. You are welcome to make a profit on
me if you like, to help offset your trip, etc. I will of course pay for
shipping as well.

--tnx
--tom