| Re: CDC Hawk Disk Drive [message #415572] |
Tue, 26 July 2022 09:22 |
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Originally posted by: Thomas Moore
On Thursday, May 6, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, Richard Shetron wrote:
> In article <7gkqt3$f5d$1...@skynet.medar.com>,
> 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.
I worked on many many Hawk drives when I worked for Wang Labs.
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
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