A Teardown History of PC Data Storage -- The EIectronics Inside 17

element14 Presents | About David | Project Videos | The Electronics Inside

I don't think it's much of a secret that I'm quite into computing. So lets look back at the history of computer storage, and compare some of the techniques, methods and hardware used.

Supplemental Content:

PC Data Storage Extra

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a531016 over 6 years ago in reply to KalebTheMaker +2

I remeber someone I knew back in the day had a 10K RPM 1.7GB (I think) SCSI raptor array with 8 drives. The thing sounded like a Helicoptor taking off during spin up, and machine gun fire when the read…
KalebTheMaker over 6 years ago +1

Thanks for the fun teardown! I remember working with those monster drives in old production mainframes. The first time I had to replace a failed drive, I took the bad one home and tore it apart. I think…
beacon_dave over 6 years ago +1

Another trip down memory lane. I recall that my first PC hard drive (20MB) used the ST506/ST412 Shugart interface with MFM/RLL encoding drives long before the (parallel) ATA and SATA days. There were three…

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gasior over 6 years ago

Two things:
1. Zip and Jaz drive was widely accepted and used, it was pretty much the standard in graphics and prepress world (dominated by Mac, hardly ever saw Zip on PC.)
2. Zip drive had SCSI interface, not Parallel (SCSI is parallel, but this should not be confused with the old PC Parallel interface.)
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beacon_dave over 6 years ago in reply to gasior

I recall using an external drive which had the parallel 'Centronics' interface.

According to this reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
there was an internal interface board to provide the parallel interface and that there were a number of different interface versions available.
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gasior over 6 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

You are right, looking closer at the video you can see male and female, SCSI would be both female. I stand corrected (I have always used SCSI.)
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a531016 over 6 years ago in reply to gasior

If you are interested, here is the back of the drive!
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a531016 over 6 years ago in reply to gasior

If you are interested, here is the back of the drive!
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