Narrow-Bandwidth Television Association

Many years ago my father worked for a company called Calius Memories in Melbourne. (not sure about the spelling). They sold 'disk packs' for mainframe computers of the late 60s/early 70s. Each platter was about 14" (35cm) in diameter and there was about nine disks per pack. I can't remember the storage capacity but it was minuscule compared to today, maybe just a megabyte or two.

They were removable, much like a floppy, but heavy and big! Storage must have been a problem for large organisations like banks etc..

The 'sales pack' for these stated, "The head to disc spacing is like flying a 747 a quarter of an Inch above the ground." ...but that's sales blurb...

The arrangement was much like today's hard drives, but without the spindle motor, just scaled up significantly...

The 'drives' contained the spindle motor and the electronics to read/write to the platters. The 'drives' were about the size of a domestic washing machine...compare that to an IBM microdrive, one Gigabyte in the dimensions of a CF card. (34 x 43mm).

Steve A.

OH that's Monster of a storage device indeed Steve ,and to think all that work is more than likely scrapped long gone by now ...

I would think that a large corporation like IBM would have a museum somewhere in the US. One would hope that things like this might be on display, though probably not operational...

Other large organisations do have museums, e.g. Kodak.

The Science Museum in London has a decent sized section devoted to computers...though I haven't been there in maybe 15 years...things change...

Steve A.

I know these discs and the washing machine. The pack could store some 540 MB!! I used this when we made the first CD-ROM disc in 1984. The problem was to get a considerable amount of data, to demonstrate the storage capacity of 600 MB of the CD-ROM. Nobody had so many data that it would fill the CD-ROM. We collected then about 150 MB and that was collected on one of these discs. It should be one "very large" file, which was called our "Jumbo file". A problem then was that when you wanted to add something, you needed twice that space on the disc, because computers work in a way that you copy the existing file, and then add what you want to add, and when this went Ok, the computer erases the old file. So just before that moment all information is twice on the disc.

And of course there was some more information on the large magnetic disc-pack, e.g. all the editing software. This was a "tour de force" for our IT-men. But it worked, and end August 1984 we demonstrated CD-ROM for the first time, then still called "CD-data".

Then in the end the Jumbo file was recorded on U-matic tape and sent to our CD-manufactoring and pressed as if it was sound. A CD-ROM is just a CD and can be played in a CD-player.

Klaas Robers wrote:I know these discs and the washing machine. The pack could store some 540 MB!!

I thought it was a lot less than that, I stand corrected!

Steve A.

When I worked for the computer department of British Leyland (motor company now defunct) we had rows and rows of these 3330 EDS (exchangable disk storage) units - each, as has been said, like a large washing machine. Files would be spread over several units to give an overall file size that would fit onto a DVD with room to spare. I believe Britain's National Museum of Computing has a number of units similar to these, albeit the likes of ICL rather than IBM

For physical size, however, these were nothing compared to the disc units of an ICL 1500 computer that was being decomissioned when I was at BL. These were in the region of three feet across and there was a fashion for attaching legs to them after decommissioning to use as coffee tables - a bowl or ashtray being found to fit into the spindle hole in the middle.

These discs couldn't really be considered as "floppy". They were rigid platters, usually made from alloys of aluminium. The largest true floppy discs that I have come across were the 8 inch ones (larger cousins of the more familiar 5¼ inch ones) - see image below.

Yes, I remember those 8" discs. I worked for a company whose Managing Director wouldn't give up his IBM Daisy-Writer. Although desk-top it needed to be a big and strong desk.

It used two 8" floppies, one for the OS, the other held your data. It really wasn't a computer, not even a word processor, more an electronic typewriter with storage. Noisy as hell (daisy-wheel remember) and guzzled power - kept the room warn through those UK winters.

I think the discs stored a whopping 100kB! Though I think over time they went up to 1.2MB.

Steve A.

I remember those first floppies as well my first 286 pc used it ......But the drives had great stepper motors for my tv projects ! but now they are now more .


I recall the zip drives they went up to a crazy 100 Mb still have one hoarder i am !

I'll see your 100MB and raise you 250MB!

I also have have a USB Zip drive to read them.

Yep, I had one of those Zip-disc drives, either 100 or 250MB of storage as I recall. But it suffered the "Click of Death". It was at the time my primary backup device...not any more! It was flung out of my sixth-floor apartment window and landed in the canal below...so much for their saying, "Your data is safe here.!" Quite the opposite..."Lose your data here..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

Still made? If so they'd have to have made the transition to USB as the one I had plugged into a parallel port...what PCs have a parallel ports these days? Though you can still get PCI parallel cards for desktops.

Steve A.

Steve Anderson wrote:Zip-disc drives, either 100 or 250MB of storage as I recall.

You recall correctly. My Zip250 drive accepts either and I have discs of both sizes, as I started with a 100MB drive before upgrading to 250MB.

Unless anyone knows better, the champion for floppy disc capacity was the Jaz drive, from the same Iomega as the Zip, with a capacity of up to 2GB. I have one somewhere, but mine was horrendously slow as it used a parallel printer port for communication rather than SCSI, and I recall it was of the earlier 1GB type.

I did think of getting a Jaz Drive but with the Zip-disk failing I lost faith in Iomega's products. And reading the Wiki you linked to I'm kinda glad I didn't buy one. As mentioned CD-R/W's offered 700MB of storage even though the ones you burn yourself can 'fade' over time leading to them simply being useless.

These days I have a gang of external hard drives hanging off the laptop via a USB hub. They're mirrors of each other so if one goes south I still have another copy of the data.

Steve A.

Steve Anderson wrote:I did think of getting a Jaz Drive but with the Zip-disk failing I lost faith in Iomega's products. And reading the Wiki you linked to I'm kinda glad I didn't buy one. As mentioned CD-R/W's offered 700MB of storage even though the ones you burn yourself can 'fade' over time leading to them simply being useless.

These days I have a gang of external hard drives hanging off the laptop via a USB hub. They're mirrors of each other so if one goes south I still have another copy of the data.

Steve A.

I have never really liked the optical disc CD or DVD i didn't know about the fading but one scratch makes them useless ..many a time found any data kept on them is pot luck if the disc still works after a few years ..reason i am turning that rubbish into records least the plastic is useful ~! ...
Yes the external HD is my hope for keeping data also , but old analog ....it seems the way to go so far for keeping information over time is magnetic tape or mechanical recordings .