Xah Lee's Unixism

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Morten Reistad <firstname at lastname.pr1v.n0> writes:
> smD  the TLA that represents a washing-machine size disk. Mountable. 
>   ^  Made impressive head crashes from time to time.
>
> But I won't interfere with this lovely thread drift with lots
> of relevant facts. 

the first disks i played with at the univ. were 2311s on 360/30; they
were individual, top-loading, with mountable disk packs; 2311 disk
pack was a little over 7mbytes. didn't find picture of 2311 ... but
this picture of 1311 were similar ... the lid of the unit was released
and raised (something like auto engine hood)
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_1311.html

the next were 2314s that came with 360/67. it was long single unit
with drive drawers that slid out. top & bottom row with 9 drives.
drives had addressing plugs .... eight plus a spare. a 2314 pack could
be mounted on the spare drive, spun up .... and then the addressing
plug pop'ed from an active unit and put in the spare drive. it reduced
the elapsed time that the system saw unavailable drive (time to power
off a drive, open the drawer, remove a pack, place in new pack, close
drawer, power up the drive). 2314 pack was about 29 mbytes. picture
of 2314 cabinet
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2314.html


the next were the 3330s ... long cabinet unit looked similar to 2314
... but with only 8 drawers (instead of 9). 3330-i pack had 100mbytes
... later 3330-ii pack had 200mbytes. picutre of 3330 unit ... the three
cloaded plastic units on top of the unit were used to remove disk pack
and hold it.
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH3330.html

close up of 3330 disk pack in its storage case ... also has picture
of 3850 tape cartridges
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH3850B.html

misc. other storage pictures:
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_photo.html

next big change was 3380 drives with totally enclosed, non-mountable
cabinet.

old posting on various speeds and feeds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#8 3330 disk drives

and some more old performance data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#10 virtual memory

i had written a report that relative disk system performance had
declined by a factor of ten times over a period of 10-15 years.  the
disk division assigned their performance group to refute the
claim. they looked at it for a couple of months and concluded that i
had somewhat understated the relative system performance decline
... that it was actually more. the issue was that other system
components had increased in performance by 40-50 times ... while disks
had only increased in performance by 4-5 times ... making relative
disk system performance 1/10th what it had been. misc. past posts
about the gpd performance group looking at the relative system
performance issue:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#29 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#22 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#63 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#3 IBM 360 memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#16 Paging query - progress

it was possibly one of the things contributing to disk divisionproviding
funding for the group up in berkeley ... misc. references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#4 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#47 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#29 cheaper low quality drives

i use to wander around bldgs 14 & 15 and eventually worked on redoing
kernel software for their use. misc. past posts about disk engineering
and product test labs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/