Re: I just thought about something.... This is incredible..

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Adrian <x86guru@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Ok, back when I was a youngster, I saved for many months (I had a
> paper-route) to buy a used Corvus Systems 20 meg hard disk for my
> Apple ][ home-made Pirate BBS system... I paid around $750 for a VERY
> used hard disk.  This hard disk was 6.37" high, and was 14.50" wide,
> and was some 23"+ inches deep.

You think that is big?  You should have seen a Nestar hard drive.

I don't have the exact dimensions, but from memory (I last saw one some
time around 1987) it would have been about 10" high, 20" wide and 40"
deep.  The original one (my school got one in 1982 or 1983) was 20 MB,
but there was a later 40 MB model in the same case.

Nestar was a networking system using a parallel interface between the
server and client machines, via a Nestar network card in each machine.
The file server was dedicated to this task.  It ran under Apple II
Pascal, and shared virtual volumes from the hard drive (or 8" floppy)
with network client machines.  The clients could be Apple II or III
computers, and the system supported DOS 3.3, Pascal, SOS and CP/M (I
never saw SOS or CP/M running with our network).  Some time in 1984, I
disassembled and modified the firware in the client network cards to add
a ProDOS driver.


On the cost side, in 1988 I paid over NZ$3000 (about US$1500) for a
(brand new) 60 MB Rodime hard drive for use on my IIgs.  Ouch!  (It was
the same footprint as the Mac Plus, about 10" x 10", and 3" high.)