20 Nov
1998
20 Nov
'98
5:30 a.m.
On Fri, 20 Nov 1998, Van Burnham wrote:
Can anybody tell me what the first external hard drive
for a Macintosh was?
I am trying desperately to remember who made it and how much memory it had
and how much it cost. I remember that it was very big and very expensive.
Any insight would be tremendously appreciated...
Wouldn't this have been Apple's own HD20 for the 512k? 20 MB, zero
footprint. Inside was a 3.5" HH Rodime disk with an Apple controller
board. It connected to the Mac's floppy disk port, which had a serial
transfer rate of a little over 500kbit/sec. The disk itself had a >60ms
seek time. It was not fast, but all in all a definite improvement over a
solely floppy based system. IIRC the unit cost over $1000 new in.. 1985?
The HD20 Init also made it possible to use an 800k floppy with the 512k. I
haven't found any real reason the HD20 Init shouldn't work on a 128k
also, but my preliminary tests indicate that it doesn't. The Apple TIL
and other web resources aren't clear on this point.
ok
r.