CitroJim wrote:I wish I could find a good picture of the CDC cartridge drives I worked with in the 80s. Size of a washing machine and 80Mb
They were blindingly fast though...
One of these babies... Very similar...
Now that's a proper hard disk!!!
That's the 12 platter one shown but the ones I mainly worked on were the little 5 platter jobs. Identical but not so tall...
My favourite old peripheral though was the band printer.. Used to love fixing those. they were animals and took no prisoners...
When dad worked for Uncle Gaddafi in Libya, he had two routes to get there.
The closest to home was from Southampton via Amsterdam, but unfortunately the customs officers there took a dislike to dad. When we saw him get off the little twin prop plane, we knew we had an hour or so before he'd make it through to us.
One evening flying out, he had to take one of those 12 platters. One of the little @#£%'s at Southampton refused to allow dad through security stating that there was an embargo on taking computers to Libya. No problem, dad told them he'd just fly out from Heathrow the next morning instead.
At 1am he was phoned by the @#£% to be told that someone would be waiting to prevent him passing through security at Heathrow, obviously wanting to disturb dad's night's sleep. "No problem, I'll see them in the morning, thank you" dad replied before hanging up.
At Heathrow he went up to one of the customs officers and said "I think someone is waiting for me" and explained what had happened at Southampton.
The officer replied "But that's just a hard drive isn't it? Blimey, I haven't seen one of those in donkey's years! Tell you what, I'll take it around the X-ray machine rather than through it just in case" and couldn't have been nicer.
Actually, the only problem dad had with the guys at Heathrow was his first return journey when he'd taken a coach across Libya (past the IRA training camps) to Tunisia, then a quick hop to Paris via Malta, before landing at Heathrow. He walked up to one in the green channel and said "Do you know I've come from Libya and not once has my hand luggage been X-rayed or checked?" They offered to check it for him and he replied "No you're alright" and just walked out!
James, my first job was for DEC (through a subcontract with Circo) for DSSD at Farnborough
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
I later regularly worked at the Winnersh triangle for NTL