Can we trust the "update history"?

On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that was
as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I think it
was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size of the
"laptop" it was connected to.


I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.

On 10/09/2016 09:44 AM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.


IIRC, that 10MB Rodime drive I had in the eighties was the physical size
of a "half height" 5.25-inch floppy drive. A friend had a Hardcard
(brand name?) that was a 3.5-inch 20MB drive on a full-length PC
expansion card.

BTW, one other PC device I had around then was a EMS (expanded, not
extended, memory) card. It had 64 socketed 256Kx1b RAM chips for a total
of 2MB on a fullsize card. Expanded memory works on a 8088 system,
extended memory requires 80286 of later.

--
77 days until the winter celebration (Sunday December 25, 2016 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are
sure of." [Clarence Darrow]

Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 10/09/2016 09:44 AM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.


IIRC, that 10MB Rodime drive I had in the eighties was the physical size
of a "half height" 5.25-inch floppy drive. A friend had a Hardcard
(brand name?) that was a 3.5-inch 20MB drive on a full-length PC
expansion card.

BTW, one other PC device I had around then was a EMS (expanded, not
extended, memory) card. It had 64 socketed 256Kx1b RAM chips for a total
of 2MB on a fullsize card. Expanded memory works on a 8088 system,
extended memory requires 80286 of later.

I remember 286s couldn't do EMS, but can do XMS. SOme games required EMS
for extra goodies like voices like in X-Wing!
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Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that was
as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I think it
was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size of the
"laptop" it was connected to.


I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.

Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine. (The
smallest, an ST506.) The washing machine was used as a
departmental file server, and was pretty reliable,
considering the technology at the time.

Xebec is not listed here as an actual disk drive company, but
then again, this list is not complete. They could always package
someone elses drive plus a Xebec card, to suit a desired interface.
I don't think I've ever seen a Xebec catalog, so I can't tell
you the depth of what they made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._manufacturers

Paul

On 2016-10-09, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 10/09/2016 09:44 AM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.


IIRC, that 10MB Rodime drive I had in the eighties was the physical size
of a "half height" 5.25-inch floppy drive. A friend had a Hardcard
(brand name?) that was a 3.5-inch 20MB drive on a full-length PC
expansion card.

BTW, one other PC device I had around then was a EMS (expanded, not
extended, memory) card. It had 64 socketed 256Kx1b RAM chips for a total
of 2MB on a fullsize card. Expanded memory works on a 8088 system,
extended memory requires 80286 of later.


I had thought I was living high with a Maxtor 5 MB drive on my
Atari 800.

Anyway, looks like the lockdown picture didn't get placed as my
bootup; could be that I had done the bypass login thingy. Or
someone hates the pic of the bird.

On 10/9/2016 at 7:42 PM, Paul's prodigious digits fired off:
Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that
was as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I
think it was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size
of the "laptop" it was connected to.


I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.

Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine. (The
smallest, an ST506.) The washing machine was used as a
departmental file server, and was pretty reliable,
considering the technology at the time.

Xebec is not listed here as an actual disk drive company, but
then again, this list is not complete. They could always package
someone elses drive plus a Xebec card, to suit a desired interface.
I don't think I've ever seen a Xebec catalog, so I can't tell
you the depth of what they made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._manufacturers

Paul

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/ibm_xebec/ibm_xebec.htm



--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/
Do not argue with an idiot He will drag you down to his level and beat
you with experience.

Ed Mullen wrote:
On 10/9/2016 at 7:42 PM, Paul's prodigious digits fired off:
Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that
was as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I
think it was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size
of the "laptop" it was connected to.


I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.

Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine. (The
smallest, an ST506.) The washing machine was used as a
departmental file server, and was pretty reliable,
considering the technology at the time.

Xebec is not listed here as an actual disk drive company, but
then again, this list is not complete. They could always package
someone elses drive plus a Xebec card, to suit a desired interface.
I don't think I've ever seen a Xebec catalog, so I can't tell
you the depth of what they made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._manufacturers

Paul

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/ibm_xebec/ibm_xebec.htm

The company must have been affiliated with someone big, because
there are several chips with Xebec branding on the controller,
plus a Z80a. Wikipedia doesn't have an article for Xebec,
and it only gets a passing reference.

http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/HardDrives/Xebec5.html

Our hardware at the time, was designed along the same lines.
You'd find an 8 bit micro and a shed-load of jelly beans
on our stuff (peripheral interface cards). And then the
main processor was a bit more substantial. So the notion
of IOPs existed a long time ago, and that idea was just copied
from how mainframes worked. To give an example of the
complexity level, the LAN controller ran using 3KB of
8-bit code. Proving that 3KB actually goes a long way
when you're not wasting it.

Paul

On 10/8/2016 4:07 AM, lew wrote:
Prior to the anniversery update, my bootup pic/wallpaper was from a
photo. After the AU, the bootup pic was either a scene of the seashore
viewed from a cave or a covered suspension bridge. Then after an
cumalative update, a head & shower figure was added with no "update
history" listed; then sometime later my original bootup pic which
was from win 7 & 8 took the place of the black figure & no trace of an
update as per the "update history".

Today, the bootup pic/wallpaper returned to what was used in
win 7 & 8; NO "update history" for the action.

Looks like windows 10 is messing around with the system when it is
running & looks like changes are made even if there is no update
or patch involved. Or is it some changes are not recorded?

I think the Login Screen now shares the wallpaper of the Lock Screen,
which is a good thing.

Anyway, due to needs I have fallen back to 8.1. I will definitely *
*CLEAN INSTALL* Win 10 again, after more special updates.

--
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/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
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�借貸! ��騙! ��交! �打交! �打劫! �自殺! 請考慮綜� (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

On 10/09/2016 05:45 PM, Ant wrote:

[snip]

I remember 286s couldn't do EMS, but can do XMS. SOme games required EMS
for extra goodies like voices like in X-Wing!


I never had a 286, but would expect it could do either. The EMS card I
had was on a 8088.

DOS 4 could use EMS, and would run on a 286. If there was a problem, I
expect I would have heard about it.

I did have a 386, and that used software that could use extended memory
as EMS (or XMS).

--
76 days until the winter celebration (Sunday December 25, 2016 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Have you noticed there are no interesting people in heaven? --Just a
hint to the girls as to where they can find their salvation." [Nietzche,
"The Will to Power"]

On 10/09/2016 06:42 PM, Paul wrote:

[snip]

Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine. (The
smallest, an ST506.) The washing machine was used as a
departmental file server, and was pretty reliable,
considering the technology at the time.

In 1980, I got to see the computer room at a major military aircraft
manufacturer. They had 3 washing-machine-sized hard drives, with a total
capacity of 1.5GB.

Now I have a 3.5-inch hard drive in my desktop PC that holds over a
thousand times that much data.

[snip]

--
76 days until the winter celebration (Sunday December 25, 2016 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Have you noticed there are no interesting people in heaven? --Just a
hint to the girls as to where they can find their salvation." [Nietzche,
"The Will to Power"]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:42:21 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that was
as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I think it
was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size of the
"laptop" it was connected to.


I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.

Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine.



Was this washing machine drive connected to a PC? I've never seen
anything that big connected to a PC. Going back to 1962, when I
started as a 1401 programmer, I remember disk drives that big, but
they were connected to mainframes.

The first drive I saw was the IBM1405 which was bigger than a washing
machine, and held 10 or 20MB, depending on model. Then in the 60s and
70s I saw and used many different IBM drives connected to 360s, 370s,
and other IBM mainframes.

And I remember "DASD Farms," rooms almost the size of a football
field, containing many disk drives.

Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 10/09/2016 05:45 PM, Ant wrote:

[snip]

I remember 286s couldn't do EMS, but can do XMS. SOme games required EMS
for extra goodies like voices like in X-Wing!


I never had a 286, but would expect it could do either. The EMS card I
had was on a 8088.

DOS 4 could use EMS, and would run on a 286. If there was a problem, I
expect I would have heard about it.

I did have a 386, and that used software that could use extended memory
as EMS (or XMS).


--
Quote of the Week: "Really. And do these lions eat ants?" --John Cleese in Monty Python's Flying Circus
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
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Ken Blake wrote:
On Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:42:21 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that was
as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I think it
was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size of the
"laptop" it was connected to.

I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.
Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine.



Was this washing machine drive connected to a PC? I've never seen
anything that big connected to a PC. Going back to 1962, when I
started as a 1401 programmer, I remember disk drives that big, but
they were connected to mainframes.

The first drive I saw was the IBM1405 which was bigger than a washing
machine, and held 10 or 20MB, depending on model. Then in the 60s and
70s I saw and used many different IBM drives connected to 360s, 370s,
and other IBM mainframes.

And I remember "DASD Farms," rooms almost the size of a football
field, containing many disk drives.


Yes. It was a desktop computer, with a DASD farm drive on
one side, and a 7 foot rack with reel to reel tape drive
on the other side. That would be your departmental file
server. Our product was a client/server architecture,
and the departmental server was the "hub".

This was the cable standard for the big drive. The tape
drive used something like GPIB (we had a card for that too).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_Module_Device

The washing machine had removable disc packs (although
normally, the same pack stayed in it the whole time).
Servo was on one surface of a platter, and the other platters
would have data. You would open the lid on the machine,
to service the disk pack. Which means the "HDA" is
exposed to "dirty air". Once the lid was closed, you
started the filtered airflow on the drive, to
"purge" the HDA. So the drive did not start immediately
after the lid was closed. You were supposed to change
the filter occasionally.

Before removing the disc pack, a plastic "cake box" lid
affixed over the platters. So the platter assembly was
protected from outside air, while you left the platter
assembly sitting on a shelf somewhere. A similar
concept to using a jewel box for a CD. Keep the dust off.

And the voice coil had a *huge* magnetic field, which
when working, would interfere with adjacent CRT based
computer monitors. In fact, that's how we could verify
the server was still up and running. At a distance, if
you could see the CRT image size change from moment to
moment, that was the mag field from the voice coil.

The washing machine used 220VAC, and an impressively
large motor in the bottom of the cabinet spun the
pack at 3600 RPM (not 5400 or 7200). But for its time,
I was completely satisfied with the performance.
Compared to the 8" floppy as our slowest device,
it was heaven. We did statistics back then, on file
size, and the average user file was a 2KB text file.

And our hardware controller, I think it wrote directly to the
platter. You waited for the write splice (alternating 1,0,1,0
pattern), then started sending "write bytes". So there was
no cache RAM, packetized SATA transport, or any fancy stuff.
If you stuck a logic analyser on the sync circuit on our board,
you were observing the digital signal coming off the (recovered)
head signal. So I suppose it would have been the same with
an ST506 and it's stepper and separate controller board.
It would have been similarly crude and backward :-)
The ST506 might have been stepper, while the washing
machine was voice cool. So the washing machine should
have had a better seek. There was no HDTune at the
time, to check :-)

Paul

On Mon, 10 Oct 2016 18:07:34 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:42:21 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 8 Oct 2016 22:47:38 -0400, Ed Mullen
wrote:


Hah! In about 1986 I had a Xebec external hard drive, 20 Mb, that was
as big as a modern tower computer. Hmm. Could be wrong but I think it
was a SCSI interface. The drive was at least twice the size of the
"laptop" it was connected to.

I've never heard of a Xebec and know nothing about it, but that size
seems strange. I got my first personal computer in 1987 and it had a
Seagate 20 MB MFM hard drive. It was about the size of a modern drive.
Xebec made SASI controller cards. We had one of their cards
in one of our products. SASI came before SCSI. The guy sitting
in the cubicle next to me, used to handle that stuff. I occasionally
fiddled with larger drives, as a sideline. The largest drive
we interfaced to, was the size of a washing machine.



Was this washing machine drive connected to a PC? I've never seen
anything that big connected to a PC. Going back to 1962, when I
started as a 1401 programmer, I remember disk drives that big, but
they were connected to mainframes.

The first drive I saw was the IBM1405 which was bigger than a washing
machine, and held 10 or 20MB, depending on model. Then in the 60s and
70s I saw and used many different IBM drives connected to 360s, 370s,
and other IBM mainframes.

And I remember "DASD Farms," rooms almost the size of a football
field, containing many disk drives.


Yes. It was a desktop computer, with a DASD farm drive on
one side, and a 7 foot rack with reel to reel tape drive
on the other side. That would be your departmental file
server. Our product was a client/server architecture,
and the departmental server was the "hub".


Thanks. As I said, I've never seen one like that.

Ken Blake wrote:

Thanks. As I said, I've never seen one like that.

It did look funny, but none of the staff
made fun of the appearance of it. Normally
such a thing would be in the server room. We kept
it away from the "cubicle village", so the noise
or activity would not upset the developers.

And hey, as long as they paid me... etc.

I think ours was the 300MB version. The disc packs
on ours, were taller than the examples here.

http://www.computerhistory.org/stora...ibm-standards/

The CRT monitor for the server, used to sit where
those two disc packs in the example photo are
located. There was just enough room to do that.

Paul