OT Hard Disks

[parky]

It's Saturday, so I thought it would be amusing to look at times gone by, imagine if you had to carry this to site "IBM 5mb Hard Disk 1950's.

 

[parky]

Actually, I remember interfacing a Tralfa robot that had 512kb of bubble memory (I assume this was non-volotile) this was in the mid 80's The cabinet for the computer was about the size of those roll along mechanics tool chest with drawers.

 

[geniusintraining]

Not that long ago bought one of these... 2TB, they never even thought about a TB back then, it also would of been larger than the plane

 

[Ken Moore]

Hate to say it, but there are Nuclear Power Plants with 10meg hard drives, the size of an old console TV, still in operation.

 

[parky]

Yes Ken that's a little worrying, When I first started in automation most PLC code was either on a handheld or a purpose unit like the SQD console or the OMRON console, most of these had tape drives & if you were lucky a floppy.
Carting these things about stretched your arms so you looked like an Ape.
The first "PC" we had was a Zenith laptop monocrome with twin floppies I think it cost about £2,500, then we upgraded to the same make but with a 10mb hard drive, we were still using the consoles but these over time were upgraded as required like the Siemens PG's the 675 (twin floppy), the 685 with a 10mb HD & then the others like OS2 based with DRDOS & CPM. eventually, to the Siemens field pg's which were windows based, however, the S5 IDE was still CPM based but they used a CPM simulator to run S5 in dos.

 

[I_Automation]

I worked in a warehouse in the late 1970's that had an IBM Model 10 that the lady that ran it said it had a solid gold hard drive worth then over $30,000 just for the gold platter. Gold back then was about $50 per ounce I think.



Anyone has one of those sitting in their garage that's a cool $1.2 Million.

 

[I_Automation]

Hate to say it, but there are Nuclear Power Plants with 10meg hard drives, the size of an old console TV, still in operation.

The sad part is that hard drive will still be running after every Western Digital and Samsung drive made today fails.


I have had 3 WD drives fail in the past year - 2 4TB both less than 2 years old and a 8TB that was only 6 months old. Plus my NAS has 2 8TB that occasionally shows a fault LED on drive 1. [Both those drives are less than 9 months old as I upgraded it from 3TB's this year]


I think for my new car I'm looking for a 1969 with a Chevy 350 small block

 

[nehpets]

I can remember back in the day when the old Allen Bradley T3 programming console with the overlaid keyboards was replaced with the T50 unit with 5-1/4" floppy drive, it was labelled "portable" but it was one heck of a lump. It was supplied with a carrying handle, that very often snapped, it was then marketed as "transportable"


Steve

 

[drbitboy]

I think for my new car I'm looking for a 1969 with a Chevy 350 small block

:thumbs up:

None of this digital electronic "magic" that either runs perfectly, or not at all and needs a tow (but hey, I can listen to Spotify!).

At least with a distributor, if you ignored it and it finally stopped running, you could buff the points with sandpaper or a nail file, set the gap with a matchbook, and drive/crawl to a NAPA to replace them.

Note my profile pic to the left: that's my standard transmission, absolutely gutless 2.3L*, 1993 Ford Ranger XLT now pushing 360kmi (570Mm+). It spent most of it's life in Georgia, but I fear these salty winters of upstate NY will be the death of the body; maybe I'll end up tooling around on just the frame and the drive train.

* on the interstate, I get cramps in my calf pushing the petal to the metal and it still cannot maintain speed on an uphill LOL.

But seriously folks,

 

[I_Automation]

:thumbs up:

None of this digital electronic "magic" that either runs perfectly, or not at all and needs a tow (but hey,

Plus the new electric smart cars can be told to not go somewhere if Washington DC decides it doesn't want anyone going there. Like head to a rally in DC.

Plus just west of Detroit they are building a smart lane on westbound I-94 that the cars will report where they started from, where they were, where they are going, and how fast they were going on each road - automatic speeding tickets and the road can tell the car to get off at a certain exit or not get off at one.
EDIT: and probably tell the car to shut down now and wait for the police

 

[Ken Roach]

A few years ago when we kicked off in-motion tolling on the SR-520 bridge, the DOT manager in charge gave an interview to the TV news that included thoughtful answers to the reporters questions about privacy concerns. He did a great job describing how the system cannot by law be used to issue speeding tickets or identify drivers.

Then they switched on the system, and they excitedly pulled up a high-resolution photo of the driver of the white Toyota Camry that was the very first car to be tolled on the system, including his speed and transponder number.

Conversely: our photo red light system also cannot by law be used for anything but traffic enforcement. A few years ago a suspect vehicle in a drive-by murder in the nightlife district tripped the red-light camera and their plate was almost certainly captured. It is entirely possible that the killer received a ticket by mail.

The prosecutors subpoena for the information was unsuccessful, and by statute the video was destroyed after 2 years. The murder remains unsolved.

 

[I_Automation]

Conversely: our photo red light system also cannot by law be used for anything but traffic enforcement. A few years ago a suspect vehicle in a drive-by murder in the nightlife district tripped the red-light camera and their plate was almost certainly captured. It is entirely possible that the killer received a ticket by mail..

In the Detroit area all the cameras at intersections are not "Red Light" cameras. They started in the suburb Troy and were put in to track vehicle movements through the city. The system was installed in every intersection in Troy to be used as a test and for marketing at no charge to the city back then.



At first they didn't do the red-light thing and were run by the police.

 

[Jeev]

Not that long ago bought one of these... 2TB, they never even thought about a TB back then, it also would of been larger than the plane

Memory and energy density is something I think about more often than I'd like to admit to

Let this sink in for a moment. Samsung just released the SSD 990 Pro in a 4TB MicroSD card.

Four TERABYTE MicroSD Card

Now you can lose an entire organisation's worth of data on your desk somewhere.

 

[Ken Roach]

In the Keanu Reeves movie version of JOHNNY MNEMONIC, his brain is overloaded by a wetware load of almost 8 gigabytes.

 

[Jeev]

In the Keanu Reeves movie version of JOHNNY MNEMONIC, his brain is overloaded by a wetware load of almost 8 gigabytes.

As mentioned in an article in Scientific American, the memory capacity of a human brain was testified to have equal to 2.5 petabytes of memory capacity.

Given the years of stress and a couple of motorcycle offs in my twenties, I'd say my brain has about the equivalent of 3.5" Floppy.