What if mass storage were free? (1980)

Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by Hooray_Darakian on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @02:18PM (#34809113)

> Optical discs promise to come one to two orders of magnitude closer to the limiting case of free mass storage than ever before. Other features of optical discs include improved reliability and a single technology for both on-line and archival storage with a long shelf life. Because of these features and because of (not in spite of) their non-deletion limitation, it is argued that optical discs fit the requirements of database systems better than magnetic discs and tapes.

Wild view from where we sit today, but CDs were ~700MB in 1982. Seagate launched a 5MB hard drive in 1980 so.... not entirely absurd to think that `just don't delete things` could be the way of the future. We sorta adopted `just don't delete things` anyway though not with respect to RDBMS systems.

Thanks for sharing!

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by joering2 on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @02:23PM (#34809186)

I recall the 10MB ad more.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0d/b3/b6/0db3b67dcdd2edbedd5c...

Classic!

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @03:10PM (#34809863)

1988: Schlumberger Cambridge Research takes possession of a new 1MB drive to be added to its VAXcluster. The drive is the size of ... a small refridgerator. It was quite a day!

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by ta1243 on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @03:22PM (#34810021)

Did you really mean Nineteen-Eighty-Eight?

In PC Magazine from July 1988 there is an advert for a 15MHz XT for $575 with an optional 30MB Segate ST238 5.25" scsi hard drive inside for an extra $295 [0]

The price hasn't dropped much since, it's now $206 for the drive [1]

[0] https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1988-07-01/page/22/mode/2...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/ST238R-Seagate-3600RPM-Internal-Drive...

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by WalterBright on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:33PM (#34810888)

At Aph we had 10Mb drives in 1978.

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by gruturo on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:33PM (#34810900)

In Winter 1987 I had an Amstrad PC1640HDMD with a 20MB MFM hard disk. I opened the case many times, the disk was just a 5.25 inch device, certainly not like 20 small refrigerators, or even one.

Bonus: I got an RLL controller and turned it into a 30MB hard disk! Couldn't believe it. But getting the interleaving right was time consuming..

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by berkut on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @05:48PM (#34811995)

I suspect that was really 1 GB?

3.5" HDs of over > 20 MB for IBM PCs were around in IBM PCs at the time.

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @06:13PM (#34812328)

OK, so I think memory was wrong on this. I found this online:

> In the 1980's we used 14 inch drives in our DEC VAX cluster. Each 14 inch drive had a capacity of about 450MB

Those platters were definitely the 14" size, and there was more than one of them in the refridgerator-sized unit. At this temporal distance, I can't guess what the overall size was anymore, but it was clearly not 1MB.

Sorry for the misleading post. Still, it was quite a day, regardless.

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by pinewurst on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @06:29PM (#34812505)

https://gunkies.org/wiki/RA81_disk_drive

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @07:24PM (#34813116)

A single head? Amazing.

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Re:What if mass storage were free? (1980) by ocal5 on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @04:41PM (#34810990)

Isn’t the way of _Glacier_ ?

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