27 Apr
2010
27 Apr
'10
11:43 a.m.
10MB for only US$3398 (plus shipping?):
http://gizmodo.com/5524908/the-hard-disk-youve-been-waiting-for
27 Apr
27 Apr
12:39 p.m.
William Blair wrote:
10MB for only US$3398 (plus shipping?):
http://gizmodo.com/5524908/the-hard-disk-youve-been-waiting-for
Cost issues aside, I wonder what the average file size is then vs. now? A
comparison of "number of average-sized files that can fit on a disk" might be
interesting.
For this desktop my average size is 236KB, so it's "about" a million files
on
the machine's 250GB disk. I wonder if that number's stayed reasonably constant
across the decades?
cheers
Jules
2:53 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Cost issues aside, I wonder what the average file size
is then vs. now? A
comparison of "number of average-sized files that can fit on a disk" might
be interesting.
For this desktop my average size is 236KB, so it's "about" a million files
on the machine's 250GB disk. I wonder if that number's stayed reasonably
constant across the decades?
It would be interesting, but I'd guess the average file size at the
time that disk came out was significantly more then ten bytes!
Cheers,
--
Steve Maddison
http://www.cosam.org/
3:49 p.m.
On 27 Apr 2010 at 20:53, Steve Maddison wrote:
It would be interesting, but I'd guess the average
file size at the
time that disk came out was significantly more then ten bytes!
Consider the time and the target audience (S100 users). Most
probably running some flavor of CP/M. So you're dealing with a
"flat" file system with a fixed number of directory slots (512 was
common for hard disks; a large file was broken into "extents", with
each extent occupying its own slot). So there was a finite limit to
the number of files that could be placed on such a device.
I seem to recall also that the official CP/M volume size lmitation
was somewhere around 8 MB. Not as restrictive as, say, the Apple II
scheme of making a (IMI?) hard disk look like 50 floppies, but there
are limits. I recall getting in an SA4000-series 14" drive with 40MB
on it and having to modify the BIOS to partition it into several CP/M
drives.
At about the same time we were deploying 7 and 14 MB Rodime 5.25"
drives, I remember that we received a sample drive from Evotek that
was something like 50MB (had a plexiglas HDA cover, so that was kind
of cool to watch). I don't think I ever saw that drive sold. I
stilll have the documentation somewhere.
--Chuck
9:10 p.m.
On Tue, 27 Apr 2010, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 27 Apr 2010 at 20:53, Steve Maddison wrote:
It would be the original Corvus "flat cable" drive with that silly
partitioning. They also did that for Atari 800, TRS-80 and a few others.
Later on they patched Apple DOS to recognize much larger volumes.
It would be interesting, but I'd guess the
average file size at the
time that disk came out was significantly more then ten bytes!
Consider the time and the target audience (S100 users). Most
probably running some flavor of CP/M. So you're dealing with a
"flat" file system with a fixed number of directory slots (512 was
common for hard disks; a large file was broken into "extents", with
each extent occupying its own slot). So there was a finite limit to
the number of files that could be placed on such a device.
I seem to recall also that the official CP/M volume size lmitation
was somewhere around 8 MB. Not as restrictive as, say, the Apple II
scheme of making a (IMI?) hard disk look like 50 floppies, but there
are limits. At about the same time we were deploying 7 and 14 MB
Rodime 5.25"
drives, I remember that we received a sample drive from Evotek that
was something like 50MB (had a plexiglas HDA cover, so that was kind
of cool to watch). I don't think I ever saw that drive sold. I
stilll have the documentation somewhere.
The 8" IMI drive in one of my older Corvus drives has a clear plexi cover
as does the Fujitsu 8" unit I'm wrestling with currently. Seemed to be a
popular design for the larger form-factor units. I guess they figured if
you're paying $5k for a drive you should be able to watch it work :-).
Steve
--
28 Apr
28 Apr
1:32 p.m.
On 27 Apr 2010 at 21:10, Steven Hirsch wrote:
The 8" IMI drive in one of my older Corvus drives
has a clear plexi
cover as does the Fujitsu 8" unit I'm wrestling with currently.
Seemed to be a popular design for the larger form-factor units. I
guess they figured if you're paying $5k for a drive you should be able
to watch it work :-).
We got a 5.25" IMI sample drive (like the one in the Corvus Apple
box) in for evaluation and played with it for a couple of weeks. It
was fun lifting the front end of the drive off the horizontal and
listening to the servo go nuts as it attempted to overcome
gravitational forces. We decided to stick wtih our SA4000 suitcase
and wait for "normal sized" 5.25" drives to mature a bit.
--Chuck
4:52 p.m.
On 4/27/10 6:10 PM, "Steven Hirsch" <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
The 8" IMI drive in one of my older Corvus drives
has a clear plexi cover
as does the Fujitsu 8" unit I'm wrestling with currently. Seemed to be a
popular design for the larger form-factor units. I guess they figured if
you're paying $5k for a drive you should be able to watch it work :-).
Steve
A friend had a multi-processor Altos (IIRC) with several 8085's in it, and
it used a 10 or 12 inch Kennedy hard drive, the entire 'bubble' surrounding
the sides and top of the platters and head mechanism was plexi or some
similar material, it was interesting to watch spin up.
Also the 8" drives used in Radio Shack 4 and 8 meg hard drive units had a
clear plastic or plexi top.
27 Apr
27 Apr
9:16 p.m.
On Apr 27, 2010, at 9:39 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:
Cost issues aside, I wonder what the average file size
is then vs.
now? A comparison of "number of average-sized files that can fit on
a disk" might be interesting.
For this desktop my average size is 236KB, so it's "about" a million
files on the machine's 250GB disk. I wonder if that number's stayed
reasonably constant across the decades?
I think we can reject that premise even without knowing the answer to
your first question. In order for it to have remained constant at
"about a million files" the average file size would have had to have
been 10 bytes. It seems reasonable to assume that's significantly
smaller than whatever the actual average file size may have been.
ok
bear
28 Apr
28 Apr
3:12 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Jules Richardson once stated:
William Blair wrote:
I actually have hard numbers for my system here (last calculated a few
months ago). For my home directory ($HOME, running a Linux system here) the
stats are:
Files: 503444
Largest path: 339
Largest filename: 85
Largest extention: 59
Largest MIME type: 29
Longest username: 9
Longest groupname: 9
(count) (bytes)
count: 503444 46860976844
files: 466163 46709437848
dirs: 35360 151490560
char-device: 0 0
block-device: 0 0
named-pipe: 1 0
symlink: 1918 47753
socket: 0 0
others: 2 683
average size: 93080
median: 3958
and for everything *but* $HOME:
Files: 385096
Largest path: 124
Largest filename: 73
Largest extention: 39
Largest MIME type: 25
Longest username: 9
Longest groupname: 9
count: 385096 8563122958
files: 332846 8428072197
dirs: 33266 134631740
char-device: 181 0
block-device: 106 0
named-pipe: 3 0
symlink: 18665 418338
socket: 28 0
others: 1 683
average size: 22236
median: 2826
This, on a 150G drive.
-spc (And the sizes almost follow Benford's Law [1][2])
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076788
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076405
10MB for only US$3398 (plus shipping?):
http://gizmodo.com/5524908/the-hard-disk-youve-been-waiting-for
Cost issues aside, I wonder what the average file size is then vs. now? A
comparison of "number of average-sized files that can fit on a disk" might
be interesting.
For this desktop my average size is 236KB, so it's "about" a million files
on the machine's 250GB disk. I wonder if that number's stayed reasonably
constant across the decades? 
27 Apr
27 Apr
2:15 p.m.
A bargain at twice the price!
________________________________
From: William Blair <wbblair3 at yahoo.com>
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Sent: Tue, April 27, 2010 10:43:17 AM
Subject: "The Hard Disk You've Been Waiting For"
10MB for only US$3398 (plus shipping?):
http://gizmodo.com/5524908/the-hard-disk-youve-been-waiting-for
5180
days inactive
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9 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
bear＠typewritten.org -
cclist＠sydex.com -
geoffr＠zipcon.net -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
oltmansg＠bellsouth.net -
snhirsch＠gmail.com -
spc＠conman.org -
steve＠cosam.org -
wbblair3＠yahoo.com