Jump to content
IGNORED

Hard drive usage in the 80's and 90's?


6BQ5

Recommended Posts

What were the mass storage solutions for the 8-bit line back in the 80's and 90's? I can't imagine there was nothing.

 

Seagate released their 20MB model, the ST-225, in the early 80's which was very common in many PCs. Something like this could have been the perfect size for a couple of partitions Even something smaller, and older, like their 10MB model, the ST-412, would have a great option.

 

Me? I had a 1050 drive and a ginormous pile of floppies.

 

Looking for the historical insight.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Corvus hard disks were available, and there were options for adding them to ATR8000 boxes. No one I knew had one though. Most of us had a single 5-1/4" floppy. I knew a guy who ran the local BBS/pirate parties and he had 2-3 810's and a 1050, I think, but my memory could be wrong - it's been a lot of years.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Atari 8-bit HDD solutions-80's-90's

 

Corvus 5MB & 10MB for 800 (controller ports 3&4)

ATR-8000 for 800/XL/XE (SIO)

Supra 10MB & 20MB HDD for XL/XE (PBI/ECI) (really just a standard HDD that came with it's own interface, so no MIO or BB required)

MIO for XL/XE (PBI/ECI) used industry standard drive

Blackbox for XL/XE (PBI/ECI) used industry standard drive

Edited by Gunstar
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bob Puff supplied me 8" Quantum hard drives for my MIO. They weighed about 20lbs each, were say 12" wide, about 20" long and perhaps 8" high. The first two were 20MB, and the last one was a 80MB. For the second mio, I can remember scoring a 47MB drive for $650 on sale, thinking what a steal it was at that price. My roommate bought one for his 520ST. Later, I put some Seagate drive on the Black Box for use with the mux, I think it was around 200MB, which I still have today.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bob also sent me one of the 8" drives when I bought the Black Box. It was 100 megs. I remember when it died. My Friend Russ (RIP) were gaming and we heard a whir that was getting louder and louder, but before we could remove power we heard a zip-ping. It was one of the heads coming off. That was the end of that drive.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There really wasn't a solution open to the 8-bit masses in the early to mid eighties, at least not one that a "normal" person could afford. Some of the already mentioned devices started appearing in the late eighties and early nineties, but by then, the masses had moved on to 16-bit computers, Macs and PCs, so I don't think they were as prevalent. I don't think we started to see much in the way of what we now think of as mass storage until the late nineties and early 2000s when the retro-computer enthusiasts started coming out of the woodwork.

 

Now, that's not to say some of our older, die-hard 8-bit enthusiasts didn't put something together; I'm certain they did. I just don't think we had options that were all that common before the mid to late nineties.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My high capacity solution for the 8-bit was not a HDD, but an ATR-8000 with (2) DSDD and (2) 1.2MB drives formatted as 1MB 77 track 8" drives. It gave me a combined capacity of 2.72MB. It was in an XT case with an XT power supply. Used it for a few years before I got a 10Mhz XT motherboard, CGA card and a 20MB MFM HDD for MSDOS 3.1 in 1988.

Edited by ACML
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Around the middle of the 90's we saw IDE solutions coming to our already orphaned Atari's, which was soon followed by compact flash adapters on the IDE bus. However it was all experimental in the beginning, not really becoming viable until the end of that decade, although by that time the cost of IDE hard drives had come way down in price, making the idea much more affordable.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Around the middle of the 90's we saw IDE solutions coming to our already orphaned Atari's, which was soon followed by compact flash adapters on the IDE bus. However it was all experimental in the beginning, not really becoming viable until the end of that decade, although by that time the price of IDE hard drives had come way down in price, making the idea much more affordable.

Yup. I had to wait until 2002 to buy a custom IDE hard drive ($100 on eBay!). I certainly knew about the Corvus drives in the ‘80s, but they were impractical for most as well as very costly. I suppose it would have been possible to acquire the “complete” A8 library in 1988, but I can’t imagine how many hundreds (thousands) of hours I would have needed at 300 baud. It’s just so different today with near instantaneous

download times and flash/SD storage solutions.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started putting together my first 8-bit HD system in the mid-80's. Found a good deal on a 10 MB, half-height MFM 5-1/4" drive; picked up a shoebox enclosure at the Dayton (OH) Computerfest; bought a 250 KB MIO from ICD; MFM bridge board and the misc cables, etc. -- I was in business. MyDos 4.2? was the only Atari type dos that supported a HD. Read all the hype about disk Sparta Dos and eagerly tried it, but kept getting my HD scrambled, so went back to MyDos. Wow! The feeling of power and speed with that HD! Got a Black Box in the early 90's, but that was mainly because the BB was compatible with many more SCSI drives. I used that system for many years until the terrific IDE drives took over. But that first HD system produced a thrill like no other!

 

-Larry

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I could only dream of HDD's in the 80's, by the early 90's I was still drooling over ads of CSS Black boxes and whatnot, but was then a poor college student, and if I had the money, it probably would have gone to other things as I only used my Atari for writing papers in college, otherwise I had girls to chase and frat parties to attend. After college I hit the road going to California and the Atari was in storage until I settled down around 2000. But I was into my Atari Jaguar and my just purchased (used) first Atari ST. By about 2003/4 I finally got back into my 8-bit and by then Atarimax had the first MyIDE cartridge that I bought, got an HDD from an old laptop, installed it in an extra (non working) SF354 drive I had from my ST purchase. That was my first HDD for my 8-bit or ST. I also got an HDD for my ST around the same time. So it was all just a dream until this century for me to own an HDD. Now I have MyIDE II used with SpartaDOS X cartridge and an 8gig CF card...all the "hard drive" I'll ever need for my 8-bit, as long as they work...

 

But even with all our modern HDD and SIO2SD, etc, options, I still use my 1010 and 1050's too. That's all nostalgia of course, and more for just using the hardware, no nostalgia for the load times, which is why my 1050's have high speed Happy's in them and my 1010 has a Rambit turbo in it...

Edited by Gunstar
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I worked in mainframe support from the mid 80s through 2000 with a few gaps.

 

Fairly sure my first PC experience with a HDD was around 1987-8 with the old Winchester 5.25" mechs and a whopping 20 Meg.

I remember even around 1998 the machine on my desk only had a 2 Gig drive though it was underpowered compared to even a midrange home machine.

 

As for the mainframes, before they started using the 5.25" PC-like drives in huge RAID arrays there were the 3350, 3380 and 3390s.

 

3350 usually in a pair and about the same size as 2 medium washing machines side by side with a capacity a bit over 300 Meg each.

 

3380 usually in a box of 4, about the size of a big double fridge. Volume size varied depending on model from about 800 Meg to 3.8 Gig each.

 

3390 was the last of the SLEDs (Single Large Expensive Disk) with volume size around 1.9 to 11.3 Gig depending on model.

 

Pricing in the day was about $80,000 for a cabinet which usually contained 4 HDA assemblies. So, cost per Gigabyte in the order of tens of thousands more than today.

Seek times were not too different to today's drives for the later ones but consider that many of these SLEDs used 12 inch platters and 2 sets of heads.

Rotational latency not so great, most ran at 3,600 RPM which is half that of most modern desktop drives.

Transfer speed before later generation fibre-optic transmission came along was nothing special either, in some cases less than 10 Meg/second per channel.

But where they do shine is the fact that there are multiple channels which can support a lot of simultaneous IO.

And generally backed by generous amounts of cache.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had the ST connected to the SIO of the XL. Very nice, to load stuff without mechanical gaps. Storing the images on the ST floppy was given though.

 

Sort of an SIO2PC? What kind of software was used to interface the ST to the XL. Files stored as ATR's or some ST format?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The first hard drive system that was available in quantity was really the ICD Muti I/O. It was still a pretty expensive device and it was only a host adapter. You still needed a SCSI hard drive. In the early days of the MIO, most people would purchase a common hard drive like the ST-225. the ST 225 was a 20MB MFM hard drive, so a SCSI controller like the Adaptec 4000A was needed. I seem to remember that the combination was around the same price as the ST-225N which was the native SCSI version of the drive (The MFM SCSO controller had the advantage that a it could support two MFM drives.) Later which RLL controllers and drives were available, storage capacity jumped... I had a 20MB drive, followed by a 65MB RLL (which was effectively the same platter as the 40MB MFM).

 

The Black Box came a couple of years later, but was very similar in terms of capabilities.

 

In my opinion, the ICD Multi I/O was an incredibly useful device: It included a persistent RAM disk (the MIO could remain powered when the computer was off and keep its contents intact), a printer buffer, standard serial and printer ports as well as the SCSI host adapter. It was intended to have an 80 column display (mine has the port, but it doesnt work), but this was not delivered in the end. You have to keep in mind that a simple 20MB setup with the Multi I/O was around $1000 in the 87-88 timeframe, if not more. Big money for most Atari users. But ICD had the DOS required to make it work well on top of everything else. Everything was developed with SpartaDOS in mind. The biggest issue with the hard drive is that there were many software programs that were either not compatible with SpartaDOS, or were not "reentrant" in that you had to shut off the computer and reboot. ICD also had the R-Time8 which supplied the useful real-time clock as an alternative to setting the time with every sub-sequent reboot.

 

But unlike the Corvus (which interfaced via joystick ports if you can believe it), the MIO provided excellent performance and usability for XL/XE users. I have no experience with the ATR-8000, but it predated the MIO for sure and did not have the same kind of performance as was available through the parallel bus. I always read about people using 8" floppies on them, but certainly it would have supported disk systems.

Edited by bbking67
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wasn't there some thing on the ST called Kermit or similar?

 

I made my own interface and wrote a 1050 emulator. It used the parallel port and did bit-banging, using the serial controller to generate the required timing.

Planned to do turbo modes but had no idea of the protocols in use for it. And it was around the time the 8-bit went into hibernation for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Short answer I'm sure others already gave: Hard disks were very expensive compared to the price of the computers themselves, in most cases costing much more. They were only available to the well off at the time unless you bought used. Many of us were just kids and didn't have that kind of money.

 

I think I ended up finally getting a 20M used hard drive with "stiction" problems that a friend gave me - he worked at a computer store that sold Macs. It was a Sony drive that worked as long as I never turned it off. If you did, it was hard to get it to spin back up, but worked fine afterward. I think I bought a used Supra SCSI controller from another local BBS user for maybe $100? It attached to the side of my Amiga 500 and I had to upgrade the ROMs through Supra to add autoboot with Kickstart 1.3. This was probably in 1990, since I recall this being in the Summer of "Ice Ice Baby".

 

I had this setup until 1994 or so when I was able to buy a used Amiga 3000 with a 100M drive in it.

 

Not Atari, though, so sorry. :)

Edited by R.Cade
Link to comment
Share on other sites

an Amiga was an Atari... in lineage, design, as well as funding... legalistic jumbling and bumbling ended up with another badge being slapped on it.. terrible as that is... Atari still had it as a game platform that was never released... very stupid moves by the new proprietors. To be honest the two should have merged after JT ate Atari....

Edited by _The Doctor__
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sort of an SIO2PC? What kind of software was used to interface the ST to the XL. Files stored as ATR's or some ST format?

It was a self created format. The Interface was built upon a tutorial in a German Computer Magazine.

The software was a self development. A little Assembler and Turbo Basic for the creating tools.

It was really interesting to play around with Sector lengths . Loading a boot file in one block, or reducing the blocks to 32Bytes, just for direct communications between the computers. That was back in 1987-88 ...

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...