ALERT: eBay Auction, Hyperdrive 512k in Disguise!

[H3NRY]

http://www.4drives.com/4drives/8425.htm

http://www.redhill.net.au/d/d-a.html

http://www.harddrives-usa.com/MINISCRIBE-8425-MFM-3.5-IN-HH-hard-drive-pr-5376.html

or Google Miniscribe 8425 for more. None of the photos show one with a front bezel, unfortunately, and I don't think I have one in my garage to photograph.

 

[JDW]

Thank you for the links. I had seen the Miniscribe 8425 photos some time ago, but that drive doesn't look like the drive used in my Hyperdrive Mac. Note how flat the top casing is on the 8425. Now note two major differences with my Hyperdrive mechanism: (1) it's tapered in sections on the top part and (2) it has a round orange plastic insert on the top as well. Both of these differences can clearly be seen in this photo:




Now compare that with the perfectly flat top of the 8425:

http://www.harddrives-usa.com/MINISCRIBE-8425-MFM-3.5-IN-HH-hard-drive-pr-5376.html

Another difference. If you compare my Hyperdrive photos with the 8425, you can see that the power connector on back is on opposite sides.

So I think the doctor truly is still "out" on this subject.

 

[H3NRY]

I think the doctor truly is still "out" on this subject.

According to your Flickr page, your drive has a MMI label with model MM 112 on it. Seems to me proof enough that's what you've got. That was a real drive company and model number. It may not be the original drive for your HyperDrive, because those old drives are fragile and most of them were fairly short-lived. Most of them were replaced within a year or two. Your drive isn't a MiniScribe or Microscience or NEC or Tandon or Rodime. They all differed in one way or another from your photos.

 

[JDW]

Your drive isn't a MiniScribe or Microscience or NEC or Tandon or Rodime. They all differed in one way or another from your photos.

Indeed. But I'm trying to determine the exact origins of the drive mechanism used in my HyperDrive Mac, even if it perhaps wasn't the original drive mechanism. It this drive certainly was built well though, as evidenced by the fact it still works perfectly.

Also, if the drive mechanism used in my HyperDrive Mac is not the original that GCC shipped, then it is quite a coincidence that The Nixer's Hyperdrive Mac 512 uses the exact same drive mechanism as mine!

 

[TheNixer]

For those bidding on this Mac - it isn't a Hyperdrive. I asked the seller for a close-up of the front and it's actually the Macintosh badge from the back of the machine.

 

[H3NRY]

But I'm trying to determine the exact origins of the drive mechanism used in my HyperDrive Mac

I'm sorry, but I fail to see what you want. You have a drive with an MMI label on it. MMI was a real drive company. General Computer shipped MMI drives among others. You want a DNA match from your drive and an assembly line worker at MMI? I don't think anyone can help you, unless you can find the accountant or head of shipping at GC and have him look up your serial number, assuming the records exist.

Nixer, does your drive have an MMI label on it? Two people with MMI Hyperdrives would seem to prove that such beasties existed, and that perhaps MMI was the most reliable drive that GC used, considering how few Hyperdrives have survived.

I was VP engineering at a disk drive company (Micah) during this period and we and all our competitors shipped drives from multiple sources, wherever we could find a supply of reasonably-reliable mechanisms. 3.5" drives were brand new at this time and everybody was trying to ramp up production and shake out the bugs in their designs. It would have been foolhardy to have your company dependent on a sole source.

 

[Mars478]

For those bidding on this Mac - it isn't a Hyperdrive. I asked the seller for a close-up of the front and it's actually the Macintosh badge from the back of the machine.

Wah wah wahhhh. Sorry for the confusion guys.

 

[JDW]

Yes, but this auction does list a Hyperdrive Mac. It is interesting though how 7 people have bid up the price to nearly $1300 in spite of the fact the seller says the Hyperdrive is non-functional. It this thing sells for that, my "working" Hyperdrive Mac would surely be worth more (not that I would dare sell it, mind you).

It's also very funny to read the top part of the listing:

Steve Jobs said back in 1984 that it couldn't be done. That is, install a 10 MB Hard Disk into a Mac 128k... Well General Computer said it could and they went on to build the HyperDrive Mac.

Now skip down to the orange paragraph for this:

General Computer installed the 10MB Harddisk and added the 512k expansion memory.

Steve Jobs was right: this isn't a 128k Mac with internal HD. Even so, the photos are interesting. And the shot of the face of the drive mechanism looks exactly like the face of my Hyperdrive. The jury is still out on exactly what my drive mechanism is though. (I'm looking for more historical technical wiki on this drive mechanism than just "it's got an MMI lable, so it's an MMI drive". But as H3NRY pointed out in a previous post, MMI was short-lived so there are probably no photos available of the drives they made. If there was photo and a model number associated, that would be a good enough "DNA match" for me.)

 

[Mars478]

Thats a very impressive auction. I just need myself some damn system 400k floppies, not all this hyperdrive mumbo jumbo :rambo: :lol:

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Yes, but this auction does list a Hyperdrive Mac. It is interesting though how 7 people have bid up the price to nearly $1300 in spite of the fact the seller says the Hyperdrive is non-functional. It this thing sells for that, my "working" Hyperdrive Mac would surely be worth more (not that I would dare sell it, mind you).

The $1300 isn't because of the Hyperdrive. It's because it's an original (and very early, at that,) 128k, complete with all original packaging; *PLUS* a rare accessory.

 

[Mac128]

It's because it's an original 128k, complete with all original packaging

Actually it's not original, nor complete. It will have a 512K board in it, or at least an upgraded 128K board. Meaning, the logicboard will have to be restored to make it as valuable as the auction has achieved. It would be hard to do that and make a profit off of it too. It's also missing some disks and the disks included are not the original software. But yes mostly complete. That box is nicer than almost any I have ever seen. Certainly it was stored better than anything I have ever owned. Probably the high bidder will keep this baby anyway. Hyperdrive or no.

 

[JDW]

An individual who used to be a GCC HyperDrive dealer in the 80's contacted me recently and we've had a long discussion about our respective units. He inspired me to take shoot additional photos of my MMI MM 112 drive mechanism, which I recently posted here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/103365672326265854011/GCCHyperDrive20DriveMechanism#

He also sent me the following scan which reveals some data about my MMI drive:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3mQLg8d1xThNmI1YjExOTYtY2Y3OS00MTA4LWEyNjUtYzk5YWNkMGUzM2Y1

And this web page indicates my MMI drive has an ST-412 controller, which if true is the newer variant of the ST-506 interface:

http://protovision.textfiles.com/computers/hd_ref41.lan

So it seems I have a 10MB, not a 20MB drive after all. He also said my Hyperdrive is an early model unit and not one he was familiar with, especially because latter Hyperdrive models didn't have MMI drive mechanisms in them (to his knowledge). There must not have been many of these made, because I've been unable to find a photo of one that exactly matches the shape of my drive (although most ST-506 drives are quite similar). In any case, I am very pleased with this info, which sheds more light into the history of my drive mechanism. I hope you reading this find it informative as well.

 

[H3NRY]

Thanks for posting those pictures. Now there IS documentation of an MMI mechanism available. I guess I should post pictures of my old disk drives for reference too. That big list covers some short-lived drive manufacturers, even a couple who never reached production. Different from today with only Seagate and WD in the same flooded industrial park...

JDW, I like your "Apple within an apple" avatar. Especially on a cube.

 

[Gorgonops]

I suppose this is useless trivia, but according to the platter/head/cylinder layout (2/4/306) that MMI drive in your Hyperdrive is from a logical standpoint literally a shrunken clone of the Seagate (Shugart) ST-412, the full-height 5 1/4" drive used in the IBM 5160 XT. (and namesake of the "ST-412" nomenclature denoting ST-506 drives which support buffered seek requests.) Space issues aside if you had an XT sitting around you could literally uncable the drives from both machines, swap them, and format them to full capacity on each other's controllers using the stock settings.

(It's probably sad that I didn't have to look up the Seagate settings. I had them memorized from having an ST-412 as my first hard drive.)

Basically what this translates to is almost *any* MFM (or RLL, they're the same hardware, just the data encoding method differs) hard drive with four or more heads and of suitable physical size would work as a replacement for a bum Hyperdrive. Drives with fewer than 306 cylinders are pretty rare. (Of course, if the formatting software lets you specify the size/geometry than you could use basically any drive that fits.)

 

[JDW]

...almost *any* MFM (or RLL, they're the same hardware, just the data encoding method differs) hard drive with four or more heads and of suitable physical size would work as a replacement for a bum Hyperdrive.

Although my MMI drive still works, I would prefer to replace it with a flash drive, since any replacement spinning platter drive that was made back in the early 1980's would have the same potential for failure, not to mention high current consumption, slow speed, noise, etc. However, I am not aware of any MFM or RLL drive replacement flash solution. Are you?

 

[Gorgonops]

There actually are a couple commercial solutions for replacing MFM/RLL hard drives with either SATA or flash... but they are turn-your-hair-white expensive, unfortunately. (North of $2000.)

Its something still just a little out of the "easy homebrew" ballpark, alas. It would probably be doable with an FPGA but it requires handling serial data at about 20mhz with no latency. (Or to put it another way, it's about ten times harder than a floppy emulator.)

 

[JDW]

I found an exact flash replacement for my MMI M112 drive:

http://www.datexdsm.com/disc/disque33.html

But the price is not shown, which leads me to believe it may be as costly as you suggest, Gorgonops! I'm afraid to even ask them about the price!

UPDATE: I just found out the price. Sheesh:

http://datex-boutique.com/product.php?id_product=47

 

[Gorgonops]

Yeah, the emulator products are priced so they might make sense if you desperately need to keep some dedicated industrial computer running. (You'll find MFM or RLL hard disks floating around in the strangest places, up to and including aircraft avionics systems.) For a hobbyist? Not so much.

I know it's a long shot, but... do any of the contacts you've found that used to work on the GCC Hyperdrive have access to the source code for the drivers and ROMs? Far more practical at a hobbyist level than creating an MFM hard drive emulator (where you have to deal with high speed serial data streams with no flow control) would be creating a complete "Hyperdrive Substitute" consisting of a Compact Flash/PATA IDE port on a 68k socket daughter card. The hardware is trivial. (Homebrew devices like that are a dime a dozen in the Atari ST and Amiga fields.) Writing drivers for custom devices is always the hard part for the antique Mac community. Since IDE/Compact Flash drives actually (partially) emulate the programming interface of a Western Digital ST-506 controller chip having the source for the Hyperdrive drivers would give you an easy leg up for writing a driver for an Atari ST-style parasite IDE board. A good programmer could probably adapt them in a few hours.

 

[H3NRY]

The easy way to put a hard disk emulator in a Mac 512 is to add one of the SCSI-equipped upgrades and Mac Plus ROMs. From there, add a notebook SCSI drive like I have in mine, or use a SCSI-IDE adapter and a CF card or something like that. You can even beef up the analog board enough to run the drive without an added power supply. No hacking assembly language required.

http://web.me.com/henryspragens/stuff/Photos/Pages/Computers.html#10

It wouldn't be a HyperDrive, though, or use any of the HyperDrive parts. If you need HyperDrive source code, you probably will have to disassemble your ROMs and create your own, like we did with the Mac 128K ROMs to run our disk drives in 1984. A solid-state HyperDrive will either be very expensive or a lot of hacking.

 

[Gorgonops]

A solid-state HyperDrive will either be very expensive or a lot of hacking.

A typical Atari ST IDE board (which would be the same hardware, essentially) is four (or less) ICs on a few square inches of double-sided circuit board. That's not exactly expensive considering the price of SCSI-IDE bridges. It is, however, a lot of a hacking.

(If you're willing to replace the stock Mac ROM with EPROMs containing a hacked version my guess would be the simplest way to do a driver from scratch would be to start with the Mac Plus ROMs and replace the SCSI driver with your IDE drive code. The only thing the Hyperdrive source would give you is some hints on how to make the whole lashup work with the 64k ROMs. Hyperdrives worked with those, right?)