Re: PATA/SATA Disk Reliability paper

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Stephen C Woods wrote:
>    As he leans on his cane, the old codger says....
> Well Disks used to come in open cannisters,  that is you took the bottom
> cover off, and then put the whould pack into the drive, and then
> unscrewed the top cover and took it out.. Clearly ventilated.  C 1975.
>
>   Later we got sealed drives, Kennedy 180 MB Winchesters they were
> called (the used IBM 3030 technology).  The had a vent pipe with two
> filters, you replaced the outer one every 90days (as part of the PM
> process).  The inner one you didn't touch.  Aparently they figured that
> it'd be a long time before the inner one got really clogged at 10 min
> exposure every 90 days.  C 1980
>
>   Still later we had a Mainframe running Un*x, it used IBM 3080 drives
> these had huge HDA boxes that wree sealed but hav vent filters that had
> to be changed every PM  (30 days,  2 hours of down time to do them
> all).  C 1985.
>
>   So drives do need to be ventilated, not so much wory about exploding,
> but rather subtle distortion of the case as the atmospheric preasure
> changed.
>
>    Doe anyone rememnber that you had to let you drives acclimate to your
> machine room for a day or so before you used them.
>
>    Ah the good old days...
>      HUH???
>
>   <scw>
I remember the DSU-10, 16 million 36 bit words of storage, which not 
only wanted to be acclimatized, but had platters so large, over a meter 
in diameter, that ther was a short crane mounting point on the box. 
Failure rate went WAY down after better air filters were installed.

I think they were made for GE by CDC, but never knew for sure. GE was a 
mainframe manufacturer until 1970, their big claim to fame was the 
GE-645, the development platform for MULTICS. They sold the computer 
business, mainframe and industrial control, in 1970 to put money into 
nuclear energy, and haven't built a power plant since. Then the 
developed a personal computer in 1978, built a plant to manufacture it 
in Waynesboro VA, and decided there was no market for a small computer.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979