CDC Hawk Disk Drive
Jim Donoghue
drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
for the drive attached to.
Does anyone know what the pin functions of these connectors might be? or
maybe the pinout of the connectors on one of these old drives? (i may be
able to get a cable).
Thanks for any information.
Andrew Gabriel
I'm not familiar with this drive (a hint to it's age
would be helpful), but it sounds like a SCSI drive
from what you've said.
I am familiar with Seagate Hawk (SCSI) drives, and
Seagate did buy CDC disks IIRC.
--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer
David K. Bryant
>I have an old Wang computer that has a controller for a CDC hawk disk
>drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
>for the drive attached to.
Sounds like a Wang 2200. Is the CPU in a box that looks
kinda like a suitcase? Do the boards have the heavy aluminum
edge like a VME (or is it MultiBus-II) ?
Richard Shetron
Jim Donoghue <jdon...@ford.com> writes:
>I have an old Wang computer that has a controller for a CDC hawk disk
>drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
>for the drive attached to.
>maybe the pinout of the connectors on one of these old drives? (i may be
>able to get a cable).
What typhe of wang computer? 2200? if 2200, which model?
is there a model/pat number on the controller?
Jim Donoghue
7502".
James Seymour
and...@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) writes:
> In article <3729DB1C...@ford.com>,
> Jim Donoghue <jdon...@ford.com> writes:
>>I have an old Wang computer that has a controller for a CDC hawk disk
>>drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
>>for the drive attached to.
>
> I'm not familiar with this drive (a hint to it's age
> would be helpful),
I used 'em as late as... <checking...> '85. My first exposure was
maybe 3 years or so before that.
> but it sounds like a SCSI drive
> from what you've said.
I don't think so :-).
>
> I am familiar with Seagate Hawk (SCSI) drives, and
> Seagate did buy CDC disks IIRC.
I know Seacrate bought the "small drives" CDC business unit. (I was
*very* upset. CDC's small [<= 5"] drives used to be the best money
could buy.) I don't know what happened to CDC's "large drives" unit or
if it, too, was eventually purchased by Seacrate.
The CDC "Hawk" drive was a 5 GB fixed, 5GB removable, 8" drive. It was
rather large. Sounded rather impressive as it "wound up", too.
AlphaMicro used to use 'em.
We were still calling them "Winchester" drives back then.
Successor to the "Hawk" was the "Phoenix", which was 20+5, IIRC.
Regards,
Jim "must be getting old" Seymour
--
Jim Seymour | Medar, Inc.
jsey...@medar.com | 38700 Grand River Ave.
Systems & Network Administrator | Farmington Hills, MI. 48335-1563
| FAX: (248)615-2971
Tim Shoppa
>
> In article <7gftiv$2...@cucumber.demon.co.uk>,
> and...@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) writes:
> > In article <3729DB1C...@ford.com>,
> > Jim Donoghue <jdon...@ford.com> writes:
> >>I have an old Wang computer that has a controller for a CDC hawk disk
> >>drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
> >>for the drive attached to.
> [snip]
> >
> > I'm not familiar with this drive (a hint to it's age
> > would be helpful),
>
> I used 'em as late as... <checking...> '85. My first exposure was
> maybe 3 years or so before that.
>
> > but it sounds like a SCSI drive
> > from what you've said.
>
> I don't think so :-).
In particular, the two 50-pin-cables sounds more like the
LESI (Low-End Storage Interconnect) used on many minis that interfaced
to CDC drives in the early-mid 80's.
> The CDC "Hawk" drive was a 5 GB fixed, 5GB removable, 8" drive. It was
> rather large.
I think you made their capacities rather large, too, by a factor
of a thousand (or a thousand and twenty four) :-).
Tim.
Thomas Tonino
> We were still calling them "Winchester" drives back then.
In a book on storage from IBM I read about the difference between
Winchester and 'the other kind of head'. A winchester head has a kind of
gimbal mount (actually stamped from thin metal) while the other style
uses a simpler springy lever.
I haven't seen the book on the shelves of the public library for quite a
while.
How well this corresponds to naming in the wild remains to be seen.
Thomas
Andrew Gabriel
jsey...@medar.com (James Seymour) writes:
>In article <7gftiv$2...@cucumber.demon.co.uk>,
> and...@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) writes:
>> In article <3729DB1C...@ford.com>,
>> Jim Donoghue <jdon...@ford.com> writes:
>>>I have an old Wang computer that has a controller for a CDC hawk disk
>>>drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
>>>for the drive attached to.
>[snip]
>>
>> I'm not familiar with this drive (a hint to it's age
>> would be helpful),
>
>I used 'em as late as... <checking...> '85. My first exposure was
>maybe 3 years or so before that.
>
>> but it sounds like a SCSI drive
>> from what you've said.
>
>I don't think so :-).
That would be as early as '82, so no, not SCSI.
>The CDC "Hawk" drive was a 5 GB fixed, 5GB removable, 8" drive. It was
>rather large. Sounded rather impressive as it "wound up", too.
>AlphaMicro used to use 'em.
That sounds similar to a CDC Lark drive which come in 8+8Mb,
and triple density 25+25Mb, again one exchangable pack and
one fixed platter.
I have several of these, including 4 working ones on a
circa 1982 GEC minicomputer.
Interface on this mini-computer is SMD, but the SMD I/O
board is separate from the drive (LMU - Lark Micro Unit),
so it may well be the case that I/O boards for other
interfaces were available.
>We were still calling them "Winchester" drives back then.
Same here.
>Successor to the "Hawk" was the "Phoenix", which was 20+5, IIRC.
The successor we used on the mini-computers was an 80Mb
exchangable pack (and no fixed disk in the drive). These
came from both CDC and Fujitsu I believe, but I don't know
the name. Ran off the same controller as the Lark (indeed,
a mixture of Larks and 80Mb drives could share the same SMD
bus). There were also fixed disks in the same range, 180Mb,
340Mb (unreliable replaced by 300Mb).
Richard Shetron
James Seymour <jsey...@medar.com> wrote:
>In article <7gftiv$2...@cucumber.demon.co.uk>,
> and...@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) writes:
>> In article <3729DB1C...@ford.com>,
>> Jim Donoghue <jdon...@ford.com> writes:
>>>I have an old Wang computer that has a controller for a CDC hawk disk
>>>drive. There are 2 50-pin centronics connectors on it, where the cable
>>>for the drive attached to.
>[snip]
>>
>> I'm not familiar with this drive (a hint to it's age
>> would be helpful),
>
>I used 'em as late as... <checking...> '85. My first exposure was
>maybe 3 years or so before that.
>
>> but it sounds like a SCSI drive
>> from what you've said.
>
>I don't think so :-).
It's not SCSI. I don't think SCSI existed when the hawk drive was
produced. If its the drive I think it is, its about the size of a 2
drawer file cabinet laying in its side.
[snip]
>The CDC "Hawk" drive was a 5 GB fixed, 5GB removable, 8" drive. It was
>rather large. Sounded rather impressive as it "wound up", too.
>AlphaMicro used to use 'em.
5MB fixed, 5MB removable. I remember getting packs in from customers
and we'd have to stick them out in the snow or the freezer since the
drives didn't have temp compensation. by cooling the packs we did a
manual temp compensation and sometimes had to do multiple coolings to
copy the entire pack.
[snip]
>Successor to the "Hawk" was the "Phoenix", which was 20+5, IIRC.
The Wang 2200 Phoenix had 13.5MB surfaces with one removable and 5 fixed
for a total storage of about 80MB. All Phoenix drives were this way,
but wang sold them in three? versions, 1removable+1fixed (27MB) , 1 + 3
(54MB?), and 1+5 (80MB). The actual difference was a couple wires that
disabled the 'unused' fixed surfaces. Customer's learned which wires
to cut and would buy the 1+1, cut the wires and have a 1+5 drive for
the cost of a 1+1. WANG shortly after dropped the 'different' models
and only sold the 80MB drive.
Thomas Moore
They had a fixed platter and a removable cartridge platter, each 5mb for a total of 10mb.
the bottom of each platter had a tracking pattern that defined the data cylinders on the tops of the platters.
The platters were 1/8" aluminum discs with a magnetic coating that could be written and read from a floating head that literally flew in the high speed air gap created by the fast spinning platter. The heads were mounted to a frame with a big wire coil ( called a voice coil) that surrounded a fixed magnet.
The heads would only come out over the platters once the drive had reached operating speed.
There was a very important air filter that kept dust from getting into the air stream. If the read/write heads touched the platter, it was known as a head crash and all the data on the platter was lost as the head planed the magnetic material off of the surface. Frequently, only the removable platter crashed unless the user left the pack in the drive long enough for the debris from the crash to circulate to the lower platter, then everything was lost.
there was a special "Alignment Pack" that was used when replacing heads. The alignment pack had the cylinder pattern on both sides of the platter so you could align the top head to the bottom head making it able to ready platters from any other aligned Hawk drive.
In the Wang OIS machine, the operating system was stored on the fixed platter and the user data was stored on the removable platter.
The ribbon cable was a large daisy chainable cable that was more or less a bus with data and address lines. I don't remember if there was a common protocol or if it was proprietary to the drive. At the time, 10mb was a big deal.
i remember there was a set of floppy disks needed to load the OIS operating system onto the Hawk drive.
The OIS system could support multiple dumb terminals. There was a single user system called the WP system (Word Processor). I don't remember if the WP system could support a Hawk drive or not, It's been a minute.
Regards,
Thom Moore