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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 16th May 2021, 8:15 am   #1
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Default Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

Hello, I am looking for info about this old hard disc. It was made by IBM in England and I think it is from 1985 or so and it is 20MB I think.

I will be very grateful if you could tell me some information about it as exact manufactured year, capacity, and the computer where it was installed in factory.

Also I will like to connect it to a modern computer but as the disc is FMF, I think it will be complicated. So the best option will be use an XT. Any other idea?
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Old 16th May 2021, 12:45 pm   #2
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Default 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).
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Old 17th May 2021, 12:02 am   #3
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Default Re: Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

Thanks, finally I received the information is an IBM made in England 18 December 1985 model 665-30 (on label) as you said it is for an IBM 286 model 5170-99 with 20 mb HDD (665-30)
 
Old 18th May 2021, 9:45 am   #4
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Default Re: Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

Look out for a Western Digital 1002 controller. These were 8 bit for the PC but will work in an AT. What is useful about them is that they came with a PROM that allowed it to format just about any size disc, up to about 40Mb or so. Otherwise you needed to know what disc type you had for the BIOS to format the disc.
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Old 18th May 2021, 12:02 pm   #5
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Default Re: Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

Thanks very much very useful information
 
Old 20th Jul 2021, 12:11 pm   #6
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Default Re: Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

Hi all,
Quote:
I doubt it was actually made by IBM, but just a relabelled Seagate / Western Digital etc.
They were made by IBM Havant and designed at IBM Rochester NY.
I worked on the mantenance of the test equipment for 4 years.
I think they were be Micro-channel interface (used in the model 90 computer, but towards the end of production they had SCSI interface too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_...l_architecture
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Old 20th Jul 2021, 1:14 pm   #7
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Default Re: Looking for info about this vintage IBM HDD

That looks the same as the hard disk in my 5170 AT - mine's a type 20 (30 MB). It would have been attached to the "FIXED DISK-FLOPPY DISKETTE" card. If you find one of those cards, check capacitor C46 before use - it's across the -12V rail and may fail as a short circuit, which'll stop the PSU starting up.
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