Compaq Deskpro boards/hard drives from the late 1990s

[Peter Corlett]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 10:51:30AM -0700, r.stricklin via cctalk wrote:
[...]
>> Regarding your "IDE HDDs were extremely rare" comment, did *anyone* other
>> than Quantum release an IDE drive in that 5.25" form factor? I can't
>> think of any, everything else was 3.5", although some early vendor's
>> drives were the same height as a "half height" 5.25" drive.
> CDC 94208-51, 62, -75. The -51 is Compaq drive type 17.

We have a winner!

I went looking for more details, expecting to find another FrankenDisk made
from an MFM drive and MFM-ATA bridge board. But compare the photos in these
listings:

https://www.recycledgoods.com/cdc-94205-51-43mb-5-25-hh-mfm-hdd/
https://www.recycledgoods.com/cdc-94208-51-43mb-5-25-half-height-ide-hard-drive-as-is/

The drive itself appears to be exactly the same unit. I don't know the
purpose of the board on the back but they have more or less the same
components in roughly the same positions on both drives so are presumably
just different revisions of the same board. The boards on the bottom are
however clearly completely different and not just because of the IDE versus
MFM connectors.

So this is a true 5.25" IDE disk.