IBM 62PC "Picollo" Disk File
This little piece of history is an IBM 62PC Disk File, an IBM term for what has today become commonly known as the Hard Disk Drive. This particular model was the first ever hard disk example to use an 8 inch recording surface. It uses a mains driven spindle motor running at 3400 RPM via a belt drive and a voice coil head positioning actuator, under track follower servo control. Developed under the codename "Piccolo" at IBM Hursley in Hampshire, England, this drive shipped in 1979 and was included in a number of IBMs midrange systems. These included later versions of the System/34 (Introduced 1977), System/38 (Introduced 1979) and in some early AS/400 systems. IBM also shipped a washing machine sized storage facility called the 3310 Direct Access Storage Facility which had provision for up to two of this drives per cabinet for a total capacity of 129MB. This was primarily aimed at customers using the IBM 4331 Processor and those with the low end of the IBM System/370 range of processors. As far as I know, IBM continued producing these drives right up to 1991, presumably for customer support purposes. The cat got in the way, however she does show to good effect the size of this unit. Total capacity of this device is 64.5MB. Incredible how far technology has come in such a short space of time...
IBM 62PC "Picollo" Disk File
This little piece of history is an IBM 62PC Disk File, an IBM term for what has today become commonly known as the Hard Disk Drive. This particular model was the first ever hard disk example to use an 8 inch recording surface. It uses a mains driven spindle motor running at 3400 RPM via a belt drive and a voice coil head positioning actuator, under track follower servo control. Developed under the codename "Piccolo" at IBM Hursley in Hampshire, England, this drive shipped in 1979 and was included in a number of IBMs midrange systems. These included later versions of the System/34 (Introduced 1977), System/38 (Introduced 1979) and in some early AS/400 systems. IBM also shipped a washing machine sized storage facility called the 3310 Direct Access Storage Facility which had provision for up to two of this drives per cabinet for a total capacity of 129MB. This was primarily aimed at customers using the IBM 4331 Processor and those with the low end of the IBM System/370 range of processors. As far as I know, IBM continued producing these drives right up to 1991, presumably for customer support purposes. The cat got in the way, however she does show to good effect the size of this unit. Total capacity of this device is 64.5MB. Incredible how far technology has come in such a short space of time...