GCC HyperDrive 20 (in Mac 512k) Photos

[Gorgonops]

Mac128 and Gorgonops, thank you for the interesting discussion on IDE. However, as I have repeatedly said throughout this thread to everyone who has brought up that ST-506 drive, the drive mechanism used in my HyperDrive Mac512 is NOT an ST-506.

*rolls eyes*

In case you missed the distinction (which was made several times over in this thread) in the thread posts mentioning "ST-506" we are referring to the details of the interface protocols and cabling, we are not talking about the drive mechanism. The "ST-506" interface (also called ST-412, based on the model of the 10MB hard drive used in the original IBM XT which used compatible cabling and controllers) was an ad-hoc industry standard and *many* different manufacturers made many different models of compatible drives.

To make it more clear:

The wikipedia article. Note the section detailing "compatible systems and developments.

The PCguide.com entry on the interface.

And for more references, just go to Google and search for "ST-506 Interface".

Further, looking at your pictures of the Hyperdrive controller I see onboard a chip labeled "WD-1010-PL". Here is a link where you can download the datasheet for the WD1010 controller chip. On the first page the first line under the "FEATURES" heading is a bullet point that says "ST506-SA1000 COMPATIBLE". (The SA1000 is a slightly earlier 8" form factor drive compatible with the ST-506.) So... no matter who made the particular drive mechanism in your system, I'd say the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it is an "ST-506" drive.

According to a list of "defunct hard drive manufacturers" MMI "left the industry", and it's pretty apparent they did so without a trace. (Googling enough turned up another reference to them in a presentation slide deck talking about consolidation in the hard drive industry.) Making knockoff ST-506-style hard drives used to be something that could be done in a small garage machine shop, and California used to be crawling with little companies doing just that, some of which died quietly and others which ended up imploding in a spectacular fashion. (MMI seems to have been in the "whimper" category.) I would bet you a shiny new nickel that there's absolutely nothing special about the drive, so if it's broken I'm sure you could replace it with one from another manufacturer assuming you can find one that has a suitable geometry. (If the formatter program doesn't let you specify the size and geometry of the drive a replacement would need to have *at least* as many heads and cylinders as the original. A larger one would work if wasting some of it would be acceptable. I would suggest a possible source being the 3 1/2 hard drives used in PC "hardcards" in the mid-80s, although those aren't exactly easy to find in working condition anymore.)

[JDW]

I would bet you a shiny new nickel that there's absolutely nothing special about the drive, so if it's broken I'm sure you could replace it with...

My drive is special insofar as it still works perfectly. If you do a little research on the GCC HyperDrive mechanisms you will find they became notorious for their failure rates. So the fact that the one I have is still alive after all these years is telling. Sure it could be a fluke, but to know that I wanted to research more about the drive itself, not simply the "category" of compatible drives. But as you too found out, MMI dropped off the face of the planet without a trace. And all that's left of them is this unique, fully functional "ST-506 compatible" drive.

[Gorgonops]

What are you hoping to find out? What you're doing is somewhat akin to trying to find out more about the chicken who laid that particularly delicious deviled egg you ate for Easter back in 1985. The chicken is dead, the farm was sold to a housing developer a year after egg was laid, and the farmer is either dead or bought a retirement home in France, no one's certain. And there was certainly nothing special in general about the eggs that came out of that chicken; heck, evidence seems to suggest the chicken ended up in the pot pie because it had a habit of laying rotten eggs.

GCC undoubtedly did what any smart company that uses generic interchangeable commodity parts in their products does: put out open tenders and buy from the lowest bidder. (Or more likely, just have a buyer pick up the phone and informally rattle a few cages when the stock gets low.) Apparently you've tracked down people at GCC who don't remember that particular mechanism; my guess is they only bought one batch. I don't know how many original Hyperdrive packages GCC sold over the product's lifetime but I doubt it was more than a few thousand (It's a pretty niche product) and thus "one batch" might of been, I dunno, a hundred units? Maybe less?

If every drive turned out by MMI were a magical one-hoss shay for the price of a normal drive I sort of doubt the company would of disappeared without even a trace of nostalgia left behind. (In any case, it'd probably be hard for the story of the company's death to be anywhere near as interesting as, say, Miniscribe's.) As it is it just so happens you have one of those rare units that's refused to climb up the backside of the bathtub curve just yet. Even the most notoriously shoddy manufacturers once and a while spit up that rare unit that miraculously had every part put into it pulled from the "good" pile and thus outlives most of its brethren. Enjoy it while it lasts.


FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day, –
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn’t be, — for the Deacon’s art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whippletree neither less or more,
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,
And the spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!

[JDW]

What you're doing is somewhat akin to trying to find out more about the chicken who laid that particularly delicious deviled egg you ate for Easter back in 1985. The chicken is dead, the farm was sold to a housing developer a year after egg was laid, and the farmer is either dead or bought a retirement home in France, no one's certain. And there was certainly nothing special in general about the eggs that came out of that chicken; heck, evidence seems to suggest the chicken ended up in the pot pie because it had a habit of laying rotten eggs.

Such a pessimistic viewpoint could be construed as suggesting: "the work of archeologists and historians is also in vain -- let us therefore utilize our time more wisely in other more meaningful pursuits."

What are you hoping to find out?

The general answer to that question is quite obviously: "that which I presently do not know." And more specifically: "more details surrounding the company who created the drive, their customers, drive failure rates, what resulted in their swift demise rather than continued success in the drive market, more on the history of GCC and what drives they choose and why, etc." We can speculate the answers, but that is often very different than hearing stories from the horse's mouth.

Inquiring minds like mine want to know these things even when others say "the answers are no where to be found, utterly impossible to unearth, and they are completely uninteresting and non-beneficial to us today anyway." It would appear that on the internet those answers are not to be found, but there are paper periodicals in numerous libraries around the nation that have yet to be digitized and put online. Furthermore, there are individuals out there on the net who once had an affiliation with GCC (and perhaps even MMI) who are still alive today and who by accidental Googling come across discussion threads like this one and then are inspired to post their experience or make contact privately. Had I never posted my GCC HyperDrive photos on Flickr or wrote such details beneath the photo, I never would have received contact by a GCC dealer! And I for one find it fascinating to engage in dialog with those who had first-hand experience with these vintage devices "back in the day." Being able to talk to these people about their experiences from the past makes ownership of a vintage computing device all the more interesting; at least, interesting to me.

And so I cannot help but feel strongly that by keeping our mouths firmly shut and never asking oddball questions, we learn nothing. It would seem that I risk the wrath of those who dislike such questions and/or who especially dislike my unrelenting persistence in asking the questions. But that is part of the risk I must take in unearthing answers, especially since I am not located in the United States where I would library access to English language US periodicals from the past. And in some small way, I must admit that the quest for those answers is as much a fulfilling job as getting the answers themselves. I may not be unearthing gold coins which have practical value and use today, but I am unearthing a little of the past which is interesting to me, and I hope is interesting to a few of you out there as well.

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-dark-night- ... 42935.html

In any event, I certainly do not wish to appear ungrateful, nor do I harbor any ill will. The recently discussion in this thread between yourself and Mac128 about IDE, ISA, ESDI and ST-506 "category" drives was a very informative, educational and interesting read. Thank you very much for that, Gorgonops.

[Gorgonops]

So, I do apologize for coming down a bit hard. I guess I was just sort of losing a little patience with seeing the various definitions of "things" go flying past each other even after they'd been stated multiple times.

To be clear: There just might be some interesting stories about the inner workings of MMI as a company, and if you can find someone who remembers where the bodies were buried they may well have some great anecdotes to share. (Well into the 80's the bar for entering the hardware industry was low enough that all it took was one or two motivated entrepreneurs/con men to set up a computer company, much like how the dot-com industry is now. And a lot of those people were brilliant, crazy, crooked, just plain incompetent... all of which can be good for a laugh or a tear in the end.) By all means keep looking for them, if you care to.

Mostly what I was concerned about here was the implication that the hard drive used in "any" GCC Hyperdrive was some priceless, proprietary, and completely irreplaceable relic turned out by a dead company no one remembers, because the obvious thing that follows is that if someone *has* a Hyperdrive with a dead mechanism clearly it's garbage and they might as well throw the whole assembly in the trash. It's worth clarifying that the Hyperdrive actually employs a once-widely-used industry-standard interface, so while MFM hard drives aren't exactly dirt common anymore the device *is* technically repairable using a donor drive from another old machine. (Assuming the software required to low-level format a blank Hyperdrive is still floating around.)

(And of course there was the philosophical discussion of how GCC's use of generic parts contrasts with Apple generally. Mac128 was leading into an interesting discussion using the Mac hard drive interfaces as an example of just how pervasive Apple's "Not Invented Here" attitude was in the first half of the 80's. Unless you went third-party every Apple computer prior to the Mac Plus used storage devices which were specifically tailored to Apple's whims with custom electronics. The HD-20 is a Macintosh example, but there were also the "Profile" and "Widget" hard drives for the Apple II/III and Lisa, and of course their endless tinkering with floppy drives. Pretty much in every case following the Disk ][ this tinkering resulted in a device that was more expensive for the consumer and in some cases arguably inferior to the "generic" option (think: "Twiggy"), so it's interesting to explore exactly what the mindset behind it all was. Were Apple's engineers *really* deluded enough to think they were that much smarter than the rest of the world, or was it all just a cynical ploy to maximize profits and lock-in customers by making everything proprietary? Or some combination of both?

Granted it's an off-topic discussion, but interesting nonetheless.)

Anyway, good luck on your quest.

[JDW]

I recently discovered that my HyperDrive is in fact a 10MB mechanism, not the 20MB model I thought I had when I first started this thread. So much for the title of this thread!

I posted more details of my findings in the following thread:
viewtopic.php?p=165807#p165807

[Trektech]

FYI, there is a nice looking 512k with Hyperdrive 20 on eBay right now.
Has a crazy big trackball for a mouse!