A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to use
a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was about the
size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made the
mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and in a
split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from his
fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they were
each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going to try
to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me monstrously
powerful magnets.

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the
skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's
all that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been
worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Rich Grise wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the
skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's
all that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been
worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

Cheers!
Rich



ROFL!! I haven't heard that one in ages.

--
Steve Walker
(remove wallet to reply)

"Rich Grise" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the
skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's
all that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been
worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

Cheers!
Rich


Don't believe I've heard that one, please tell.

Ernie Sty wrote:
"Rich Grise" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon
made the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close
together and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a
little of the skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's
really lucky that's all that happened. I can think of a number of
ways it could have been worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

Cheers!
Rich


Don't believe I've heard that one, please tell.

A 13 day camel is a five day camel that's been bricked .












A brick in your left hand , a brick in your right hand .












Snap together smartly .






With the camel's nuts in between while he's drinking .

--

Snag aka OSG #1
'90 Ultra , "Strider"
The road goes on forever ...
none to one to reply

Ernie Sty wrote:
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to use
a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was about the
size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made the
mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and in a
split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from his
fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they were
each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going to try
to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me monstrously
powerful magnets.


I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner, which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...

--


Regards,
Joe Agro, Jr.
(800) 871-5022
01.908.542.0244
Automatic / Pneumatic Drills: http://www.AutoDrill.com
Multiple Spindle Drills: http://www.Multi-Drill.com

V8013-R


"Ernie Sty" wrote in message
...
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from
his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both
cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:52:02 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:
"Rich Grise" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the
skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky
that's all that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could
have been worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

Don't believe I've heard that one, please tell.

Some guy goes to the camel lot, and Achmed has a special deal:
"get your 13-day camel here". A 13-day camel is one that can
last 13 days without water, a regular camel lasts 5.

"So, how do you do that?" the customer asks.

Achmed leads the camel to the water trough, and while it's getting
a drink, Achmed takes two bricks and slaps them together on the
camel's testicles.

The camel goes "SHOOOOOP!!!!" and sucks up 13 days' worth of water.

"But isn't that terribly painful?" asks the customer.

"Nah, not if you keep your thumbs out from between the bricks."

Cheers!
Rich

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:03:05 -0400, Steve Walker wrote:
Rich Grise wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the
skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky
that's all that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could
have been worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

ROFL!! I haven't heard that one in ages.

One thing that makes getting old tolerable is that, every generation,
there's a whole slew of kids that haven't heard the old jokes. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

"Rich Grise" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:52:02 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:
"Rich Grise" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:55:00 -0500, Ernie Sty wrote:

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the
skin from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky
that's all that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could
have been worse.

Kind of like the 13-day camel? ;-)

Don't believe I've heard that one, please tell.

Some guy goes to the camel lot, and Achmed has a special deal:
"get your 13-day camel here". A 13-day camel is one that can
last 13 days without water, a regular camel lasts 5.

"So, how do you do that?" the customer asks.

Achmed leads the camel to the water trough, and while it's getting
a drink, Achmed takes two bricks and slaps them together on the
camel's testicles.

The camel goes "SHOOOOOP!!!!" and sucks up 13 days' worth of water.

"But isn't that terribly painful?" asks the customer.

"Nah, not if you keep your thumbs out from between the bricks."

Cheers!
Rich

LOL, that's great.

"David R Brooks" wrote in message
...
Ernie Sty wrote:
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use
a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was about
the
size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the
mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and in
a
split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from his
fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were
each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going to
try
to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both
cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously
powerful magnets.


I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner,

They did.

which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

Heh. Good times...

Jeeze... Probably, yeah--if it had the same type of head-positioning
system.

"Joe AutoDrill" wrote in message
news:Hw4Pi.9130$C2.7151@trnddc02...
I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...

--


Regards,
Joe Agro, Jr.
(800) 871-5022
01.908.542.0244
Automatic / Pneumatic Drills: http://www.AutoDrill.com
Multiple Spindle Drills: http://www.Multi-Drill.com

V8013-R


"Ernie Sty" wrote in message
...
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin
from his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all
that happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were
both cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.

David R Brooks wrote:

I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner, which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

Yes indeedy. I worked on a bunch of those in Chem dept at UNM.
14 inch removable platters. Thanks goodness we got rid of them
before I retired. The last while had Winchester drives on the
Mass Specs.
...lew...

David R Brooks wrote:
Ernie Sty wrote:
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to use
a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was about the
size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made the
mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and in a
split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from his
fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they were
each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going to try
to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me monstrously
powerful magnets.


I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner, which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

what sort of drives were these?

Cydrome Leader wrote:
David R Brooks wrote:
Ernie Sty wrote:
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to use
a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was about the
size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made the
mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and in a
split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from his
fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they were
each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going to try
to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me monstrously
powerful magnets.


I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner, which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

what sort of drives were these?

I don't recall the exact models (it was 30 years ago), but they slid in
a 19" rack, & weighed about 80#. Platters being 14", double deckers (1
fixed, 1 removeable). One drive (Diablo, afair) used a 3-phase generator
attached to the spindle to power the electronics. Used the mechanical
inertia as a UPS & powerline filter. Together with a head-per-track area
on the bottom surface, it was claimed you could scram out the RAM to
disk on a power loss, before the spindle lost speed. The weakness here
is, there was no way to power the CPU off that generator (it wouldn't
have been rated for the extra power, anyway.)
The early versions of these used metal heads (later, & now, they are
ceramic.) A metal head ploughing into the disk surface will just destroy
both. Ceramic will get scuffed, but the data is usually readable.

David R Brooks wrote:
Cydrome Leader wrote:
David R Brooks wrote:
Ernie Sty wrote:
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something

[cut]

I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner, which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

what sort of drives were these?

I don't recall the exact models (it was 30 years ago), but they slid in
a 19" rack, & weighed about 80#. Platters being 14", double deckers (1
fixed, 1 removeable). One drive (Diablo, afair) used a 3-phase generator
attached to the spindle to power the electronics. Used the mechanical
inertia as a UPS & powerline filter. Together with a head-per-track area
on the bottom surface, it was claimed you could scram out the RAM to
disk on a power loss, before the spindle lost speed. The weakness here
is, there was no way to power the CPU off that generator (it wouldn't
have been rated for the extra power, anyway.)
The early versions of these used metal heads (later, & now, they are
ceramic.) A metal head ploughing into the disk surface will just destroy
both. Ceramic will get scuffed, but the data is usually readable.

That's interesting.

There were some 5 1/4" disk drives made by Imprimis that used power from
the spinning platters to park the heads, then it seems to brake and
completely spin down pretty fast.

Thay made a unique sound when losing power.

On Oct 10, 8:33 am, "Joe AutoDrill" wrote:
I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...

--

Regards,
Joe Agro, Jr.
(800) 871-5022
01.908.542.0244
Automatic / Pneumatic Drills:http://www.AutoDrill.com
Multiple Spindle Drills:http://www.Multi-Drill.com

V8013-R

"Ernie Sty" wrote in message

...



A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from
his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both
cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I still have a head positioning magnet from a disk drive from the
original Cray1.
The drive was as big as a couple washing machines, and ran on 208V
three phase.
The drive magnets were about 12" X 10" X 10" in a cube.
That beast could heat a house, and had a whopping 300 MegByte. NOT
GigaByte... MegaByte.
When they did seeks, whole buildings could shake. Litterally.
I almost saw a huge old IBM 360 system tip over in the same room when
these drives were installed, from the floor shaking.

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:23:27 -0700, Half-Nutz wrote:
On Oct 10, 8:33 am, "Joe AutoDrill" wrote:
I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...

"Ernie Sty" wrote in message

A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from
his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both
cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.- Hide quoted text -

I still have a head positioning magnet from a disk drive from the
original Cray1.
The drive was as big as a couple washing machines, and ran on 208V
three phase.
The drive magnets were about 12" X 10" X 10" in a cube.
That beast could heat a house, and had a whopping 300 MegByte. NOT
GigaByte... MegaByte.
When they did seeks, whole buildings could shake. Litterally.
I almost saw a huge old IBM 360 system tip over in the same room when
these drives were installed, from the floor shaking.

Sounds like you've just described a Control Data Magnetic Peripherals
Division FMD ("Fixed Module Drive") drive. I used to work there. The head
positioner test was pretty awesome - it shook about like a washing machine
on "spin".

Didn't Mr. Cray quit CDC to start Cray? I bet he took these with him. Or,
he might have just bought them outright.

Heck, I might have worked on the one that your magnet came out of! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:45:35 +0000, Cydrome Leader wrote:

David R Brooks wrote:
Ernie Sty wrote:
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to use
a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was about the
size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made the
mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and in a
split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from his
fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they were
each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going to try
to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me monstrously
powerful magnets.


I once worked as a service tech on drives like that. Those magnets
probably came out of the head positioner, which is a *righteous* linear
motor. There might have been a nice DRO-like glass scale to go with it.
We were severely warned to keep hands out of that thing when the power
cord was in. If it detected a low-speed fault (like, the power fails), a
crowbar SCR dumped the 48V supply cap. into that motor coil, to drag the
heads off the disk instanter. You really did not want fingers in the way
of that...

what sort of drives were these?

BIG ones. 10 platters, 30 megabytes (not gigabytes) per platter. 19 flying
heads, with an option for a "fixed head shoe", on the bottom side of the
bottom platter, with about 64 heads, for zero seek time.

Cheers!
Rich

"Half-Nutz" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Oct 10, 8:33 am, "Joe AutoDrill" wrote:
I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...

--

Regards,
Joe Agro, Jr.
(800) 871-5022
01.908.542.0244
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"Ernie Sty" wrote in message

...



A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big,
something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together
and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin
from
his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was
going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were
both
cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I still have a head positioning magnet from a disk drive from the
original Cray1.
The drive was as big as a couple washing machines, and ran on 208V
three phase.
The drive magnets were about 12" X 10" X 10" in a cube.


Good flerking squeeb! How strong is it? Toss it in a car the car would
probably collapse in around it... Sheesh! And you still have it? How much
would something like that run for? And what on earth can you do with it
other than keep magnetic stuff way away from it?

On Oct 11, 3:47 pm, Rich Grise wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:23:27 -0700, Half-Nutz wrote:
On Oct 10, 8:33 am, "Joe AutoDrill" wrote:
I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...

"Ernie Sty" wrote in message

A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.

A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.

I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from
his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.

He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both
cracked.

I think he was, too, a little.

Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.- Hide quoted text -

I still have a head positioning magnet from a disk drive from the
original Cray1.
The drive was as big as a couple washing machines, and ran on 208V
three phase.
The drive magnets were about 12" X 10" X 10" in a cube.
That beast could heat a house, and had a whopping 300 MegByte. NOT
GigaByte... MegaByte.
When they did seeks, whole buildings could shake. Litterally.
I almost saw a huge old IBM 360 system tip over in the same room when
these drives were installed, from the floor shaking.

Sounds like you've just described a Control Data Magnetic Peripherals
Division FMD ("Fixed Module Drive") drive. I used to work there. The head
positioner test was pretty awesome - it shook about like a washing machine
on "spin".

Didn't Mr. Cray quit CDC to start Cray? I bet he took these with him. Or,
he might have just bought them outright.

Heck, I might have worked on the one that your magnet came out of! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Rich..
Seymour left CDC to start Cray..
They had set him up with the "Hallie Lab" where the CDC 7600, and ill
fated 8600 were developed.
There was some conflict, I forget the details, it is better told in
the book "Supermen"

Anyhow, Seymour's house was a few hundred feet from the Hallie Lab. So
he built a new lab on the other side of the driveway, and that is
where Cray Research got started.
A LOT of guys from the 7600 / 8600 project followed as soon as they
had room for them.
I met people that had designed the "six pack" PPU's that you probobly
used to check out the drives, and guys that designed the disk
controllers from the 7600's.

They started with a CDC disk controller, and had a rat's nest of wires
going into Cray designed boards to interface to the Cray channels.
Later, they re-designed the whole disk controller with all Cray parts.
Since it was the same guys re-designing it, it might have had
"similar" logic in it.
They started out with DD19's then later DD29's
he magnet is from a DD19 or a DD29. 300 or 600 MegaBytes (!!)

Later they sank a TON of money into a company called Ibis to make high
performance disk drives, 1200 MegaBytes, and as big as the old CDC
units.

I might even have an old FTU case for the DD19's They made a nice
little tool caddy.
Thanks for the memories!

And you are from the era where they had the ads on TV,
"If you like working with your hands, but don't like to get your
fingers dirty, Call the Control Data Institute"
Ironically, the actor saying those lines is closing the lid on a high
speed Chain printer, one of the nastiest, messiest, horrifying things
to work on, being FULL of ink, all over the printing chain! G

I interviewed when Cray1 serial number 2, and 3 were on the floor, and
stated in time to help check out serial number 5.

Some serious history, and WILD stories from all the people coming and
going, from all the sites around the world.

Yep - we had a Cray - several of them. And I used to fly and drive
in to train and help as needed the test types - component test.

Helped debug a later issue with a memory supplier and it was an odd
issue that was critical. Such is life when one lives between
customers and has to work with both ends.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/


Half-Nutz wrote:
On Oct 11, 3:47 pm, Rich Grise wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:23:27 -0700, Half-Nutz wrote:
On Oct 10, 8:33 am, "Joe AutoDrill" wrote:
I wish I still had the two gigantic 12 meg hard drives I picked up in the
80's... 36" long by about 24" wide and about 10-12" thick... I'm sure
there were possibly some huge magnets in there...
"Ernie Sty" wrote in message
A guy I know bid on an old non-working hard drive. It was big, something
like ten inches by maybe 18 inches by three inches. I asked him why he
wanted it, and he said he'd show me.
A few days later, the display on my CRT started wobbling. The guy was
holding a magnet a good six feet away from my monitor and rotating it
slightly. Needless to say, he got it out of the hard drive. He had to
use a ball joint separator to get the two magnets apart. Each one was
about the size of two decks of cards, if I recall correctly.
I never found out what the strength of those magnets was. He soon made
the mistake of holding one in each hand. They got too close together and
in a split second they had collided, nipping off a little of the skin from
his fingers in the process. I figure he's really lucky that's all that
happened. I can think of a number of ways it could have been worse.
He brought in the now-stuck-together magnets and surprisingly (to me,
anyway) their magnetic pull for other objects was very weak, like they
were each absorbing the magnetism of the other. I asked if he was going
to try to separate them, and he said no, and showed me that they were both
cracked.
I think he was, too, a little.
Anyway, that's all the experience I've had with what were to me
monstrously powerful magnets.- Hide quoted text -
I still have a head positioning magnet from a disk drive from the
original Cray1.
The drive was as big as a couple washing machines, and ran on 208V
three phase.
The drive magnets were about 12" X 10" X 10" in a cube.
That beast could heat a house, and had a whopping 300 MegByte. NOT
GigaByte... MegaByte.
When they did seeks, whole buildings could shake. Litterally.
I almost saw a huge old IBM 360 system tip over in the same room when
these drives were installed, from the floor shaking.
Sounds like you've just described a Control Data Magnetic Peripherals
Division FMD ("Fixed Module Drive") drive. I used to work there. The head
positioner test was pretty awesome - it shook about like a washing machine
on "spin".

Didn't Mr. Cray quit CDC to start Cray? I bet he took these with him. Or,
he might have just bought them outright.

Heck, I might have worked on the one that your magnet came out of! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Rich..
Seymour left CDC to start Cray..
They had set him up with the "Hallie Lab" where the CDC 7600, and ill
fated 8600 were developed.
There was some conflict, I forget the details, it is better told in
the book "Supermen"

Anyhow, Seymour's house was a few hundred feet from the Hallie Lab. So
he built a new lab on the other side of the driveway, and that is
where Cray Research got started.
A LOT of guys from the 7600 / 8600 project followed as soon as they
had room for them.
I met people that had designed the "six pack" PPU's that you probobly
used to check out the drives, and guys that designed the disk
controllers from the 7600's.

They started with a CDC disk controller, and had a rat's nest of wires
going into Cray designed boards to interface to the Cray channels.
Later, they re-designed the whole disk controller with all Cray parts.
Since it was the same guys re-designing it, it might have had
"similar" logic in it.
They started out with DD19's then later DD29's
he magnet is from a DD19 or a DD29. 300 or 600 MegaBytes (!!)

Later they sank a TON of money into a company called Ibis to make high
performance disk drives, 1200 MegaBytes, and as big as the old CDC
units.

I might even have an old FTU case for the DD19's They made a nice
little tool caddy.
Thanks for the memories!

And you are from the era where they had the ads on TV,
"If you like working with your hands, but don't like to get your
fingers dirty, Call the Control Data Institute"
Ironically, the actor saying those lines is closing the lid on a high
speed Chain printer, one of the nastiest, messiest, horrifying things
to work on, being FULL of ink, all over the printing chain! G

I interviewed when Cray1 serial number 2, and 3 were on the floor, and
stated in time to help check out serial number 5.

Some serious history, and WILD stories from all the people coming and
going, from all the sites around the world.


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