I got this 2Tb one the other day for £55 www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BBR4QCPP?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
It's insanely fast. The ATTO disk benchmark shows it as way more than 4 x faster than my existing Samsung PRO SSDs - it peaks around 2.7GB/s read and write. Copied a 400Gb file from one partition on the drive to another in about 8 minutes, with a sustained speed (as reported by Copy) of around 875 - 925 MB/s.
You do need the right slot on your motherboard though.
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 7 Sep 23 at 12:51
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That's astonishing. It's just gone up a few £ since you've posted. Still an ace deal.
I recall a 120mb laptop HDD for my Amiga 1200 (sadly sold) cost £300 in 1990s money. That would equate to £5m for the same capacity and probably more as it would have created a shortage of drives!
Same goes for memory. The lad just got a new USB stick. 64gb for £6. I got a 16k RAM pack for my Zx81 in the 80s for £69.99. 64gb would have cost nearly £280 million and more as it would again have caused a chip shortage, pushing up prices!
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I worked on some of the earlier, but by no means the earliest, mini computers. I was brought up on tapes and removeable 288mb disk drives, which were put into a cabinet about the size (and not dissimilar design to) a top loading washing machine. Here's one media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4D2CAQFKRqgyz6wk1Q/comment-image-shrink_8192_1280/0/1684250605100?e=1694779200&v=beta&t=Hi-XZ4k_Zth0a6Uv19XjQPhXL0eMQSbOKfPmlpN72wk
I don't remember the cost of a drive but they were expensive, very expensive. For 288mb. Not even sure you can buy anything that small these days... :-)
There are folks here who can go back even further!
EDIT: Just found a doc where they did a price drop to $18,000 for the 288mb disk.
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 8 Sep 23 at 12:07
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>>
>> There are folks here who can go back even further!
>>
There certainly are. I remember a few fixed disc systems in my early days (used them on a Honeywell m/c for program overlays), but the first exchangeable I recall is the ICL EDS8 (8MB).
Mainframe, of course.
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"Mainframe, of course."
Oh, one of those in white coats. :-)
Our machines were stuck in the corner of the computer room and we were looked down on by the mainframe gang
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My first encounter with a computerised office was in the mid eighties looking after litigant's money in which was 'paid into court' for various reasons. We had Tandberg terminals comprising a screen with green text and a keyboard. They were linked to a mainframe over the road, a some make or other 1000 IIRC. There was a backup in Northampton which was supposed to kick in seamlessly if the one next door went down.
Later I moved to another role, still dealing with private money but in a different capacity.
This used a Boroughs 'mini' computer. About the size of a drinks cabinet and supposedly capable of working in an ordinary office. It ran a solicitors accounting package called SOLACS which we'd had customised....
It didn't like hot weather.
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Best place I ever worked in had A/C. It must have been a room that had some electronics in it. The a/c was supplied by a 3 phase supply! There was a 'stat on the wall that had a range of 0-100. I deduced it was a humidistat. There were controls in the plant room. The a/c would never work properly. Maintenance insisted the stat was a thermostat, despite me dismantling it and showing the horse hair inside.
I spent months trying to resolve the problem, even resorting to viewing the circuit boards under a magnifying lamp. Finally found the 'chocolate strip' connectors had all loose screws, every one of them! Finally got it working, but a couple of staff insisted on opening windows 'to get some fresh air'. I showed them the plant room and the outside shutters, that opened or closed depending on the demands, that always allowed an amount of fresh air, even when on full re-cycle. I guess they were the types that drove around in thei a/c cars with the windows open.
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3-phase supply - lots of stories during my working life around mistakes with power supply.
1999/2000 the SQA were merging their administration School Qualifications and FE College Qualifications - prior to this the 2 lots of qualifications were separate bodies.
The new system was to be up & running for the start of the academic year(it wasn't) and all courses were to regraded & recoded (they weren't).
Chaos reigned and in roughly February they still could not enrol students for exams in May and zero chance of results in August. Daily Express broke the story and all hell let loose. They ended up with a rooms full of PCs - each PC had a few schools and a spreadsheet for each school. BIG errors made but most kids got their certificates - many were denied access to their University courses that year as errors could not be corrected in time for the new University year in September..
SQA called in big guns to dig them out - IBM got the contract and they started from scratch - a few months later they were enrolling new students having bought 2 x fairly large & expensive IBM Unix boxes.
2 Unix boxes? The first Unix box was delivered and the SQA plugged it in themselves in the "computer room" Instead of using the 3 pin /13 amp plug supplied they connected it to a 3-phase 400Volts+/- . Their old hardware, in the room, was the size several of today's US Style Fridge Freezers and was fed with 3-phase.
The final bill for the IT fiasco, phased over about 2 years, was some £39 million! The annual cost of running the SQA in "normal years" was around £60m per year.
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M.2 SSD prices have been falling like a brick - zippy
