UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

ortek_service · 16th May 2021, 12:45 pm

Unfortunately the images are too-compressed (may have been done by forum - If you zip them up first, you can have much larger image file sizes), to be able to fully-read the text on the labels. And some other (ends / top / underside) views mights be useful.

I doubt it was actually made by IBM, but just a relabelled Seagate / Western Digital etc.
And it is most likely an MFM (Probably too low capacity for later RLL) ST506 Interface with 34pin Control cable and a 20pin data connector for each drive.

It will most-likely have been fitted to an IBM PC-AT (286) - Which did use these Full-height 5.25" drives.
I'm not sure if the PC-XT (8088) had an HDD > 10MB.

You may be able to interface it to any PC that still has ISA slots, if you can get hold of a (Western Digital etc.) HDD+FDC ISA Controller Card - I think these were usually 16bit, so may not fit a PC-XT (which would have needed an 8bit version).

16th May 2021, 12:45 pm	#2
ortek_service Octode Join Date: May 2018 Location: Northampton, Northamptonshire, UK. Posts: 1,444	Re: Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD Unfortunately the images are too-compressed (may have been done by forum - If you zip them up first, you can have much larger image file sizes), to be able to fully-read the text on the labels. And some other (ends / top / underside) views mights be useful. I doubt it was actually made by IBM, but just a relabelled Seagate / Western Digital etc. And it is most likely an MFM (Probably too low capacity for later RLL) ST506 Interface with 34pin Control cable and a 20pin data connector for each drive. It will most-likely have been fitted to an IBM PC-AT (286) - Which did use these Full-height 5.25" drives. I'm not sure if the PC-XT (8088) had an HDD > 10MB. You may be able to interface it to any PC that still has ISA slots, if you can get hold of a (Western Digital etc.) HDD+FDC ISA Controller Card - I think these were usually 16bit, so may not fit a PC-XT (which would have needed an 8bit version).