Something Moderately Special - A Rodime HD20

[Concorde1993]

I received this earlier this month via courier after completing another transaction with Strimkind (as usual, many thanks for the awesome packaging), and, naturally, the unit appears to be in excellent working condition. It is also in great cosmetic shape (despite some yellowing in the back, and on the sides, which is understandable considering the age of the unit). I haven't had much time to explore the innards of this unit, but I am assuming it is using a 3.5" hard drive, taking into account the noticeable weight difference upon comparing this unit with my Apple SC20, which uses the 5.25" ST-225N).

Here are some pics below. I believe that this drive is closely related to the HD20 Apple released for the 512K in 1985 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Disk_20).

 

[Scott Baret]

Nice find!!!

Rodime drives can be tough to find in good condition. They had a horrible reputation in the late 80s for reliability. Congrats on finding a good working unit!!!

 

[mcdermd]

My dad still has his hooked up to his 512K. I like those early Rodimes because they keep the softer curves of the early HD20 unlike most of the aftermarket drive cases.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

They still have a horrible reputation. My Plus' Rodime died about two weeks ago. I'm going to put a more reliable SCSI drive in there and format it for Plus interleave when I get a spare chance.

They are not particularly related to the Apple HD20, though.

 

[Concorde1993]

They still have a horrible reputation. My Plus' Rodime died about two weeks ago.

That's quite unfortunate. I had a similar experience with a Jasmine Direct 80 drive a couple of years ago, which were also known for quality issues. The drive suddenly started generating bad sectors after a few of weeks of operation, to the point where my Plus refused to boot off from the drive (I started getting bombs, and error -27 messages). I hope you were able to recover your data (or, better yet, made periodic backups before catastrophe occurred).

They are not particularly related to the Apple HD20, though.

I dunno. There appears to be quite a bit of cosmetic similarities between the two, in addition to the fact that both use the same 3.5" HD, and power supply. The only major difference is that these Rodime HD20s are not backwards compatible with the 512K (afaik).

 

[Scott Baret]

Ah, Jasmine drives. They got good reviews when they came out, but the quality issues surfaced and the company went bankrupt just as all the units began to fail. Does anyone know what brand of drive mechanisms were inside those?

I'm curious as to whether anyone has a "Mac Crate" hard drive. I'm not sure who made it, but I remember seeing one at my doctor's office in the early 90s hooked up to a Plus.

 

[Gorgonops]

I'm still not seeing the alleged "connection" to Apple's HD-20, here. This is an external hard drive cased in a box that fits under the Mac and the name contains "HD" in caps, but other than that, well, no? (It's clearly a SCSI hard drive, not a weird IWM monstrosity, and it is of course a third-party rather than an Apple product. And I *seriously* doubt it uses the same proprietary drive mechanism as the Apple HD-20. Have you looked inside it yet?)

 

[Concorde1993]

Have you looked inside it yet?

No, but I can check it out, and post some pics of the interior by the end of the week.

Btw, do you have an Apple HD20 to compare with?

 

[Gorgonops]

Apple HD20 to compare with?

If you search the forum you'll find several long threads about the innards of the HD-20, and I'm pretty sure more than one of them link to a Flickr set of a fairly detailed teardown... here's a link to the start.

Looking at it again, well... I am sort of wondering if you might have a point. At least the mechanical mechanism in the HD-20 was manufactured by Rodime, and there are similarities in the external case styling... perhaps Rodime was a full OEM partner with Apple on the HD-20? A look inside yours might actually *be* interesting. I suppose it's not *impossible* that it could use the same drive with a SCSI bridge in front of it in place of the IWM controller board.

 

[CelGen]

I never used a Rodime dive with a mac but Apricot used Rodime drives in their systems and they were awful.

 

[Brooklyn]

My first Mac was an SE with that same external Rodime. Still worked fine, even though the internal 40mb stock HD was dead.

Enjoy it!

 

[ClassicHasClass]

When I put the new drive in, I'm going to name it ... wait for it ... Rodimus Prime.

 

[Concorde1993]

A look inside yours might actually *be* interesting.

Here are the pics as promised. I will say that the case on this unit, in comparison to my Apple SC20 (with those stupid plastic tabs), is a hell of a lot easier to open. Just remove the two mounting screws in the back...







...and presto!

In regards to quality, this particular drive was manufactured in Scotland. Were all Rodime drives solely manufactured there, or were there other manufacturing plants? I ask because there may be a possibility that one plant was notorious for poor quality control, while the others may not have been as unfortunate.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

If it's Scottish, it's crrrrrrrrrap.

I'm not sure where Rodime had plants, tbh. It may have even been manufactured under contract (like Foxconn manufactures Apples now).

 

[Gorgonops]

So, the internal pictures pretty much debunk any connection to the HD20 with one exception; the drive mechanism, model number RO652, looks like it may well share the same motor/platter/case assembly as the RO552 the HD20 came with. The electronics, however, are completely different. (This drive is a native SCSI unit, and all the circuit board in the case does is adapt the card edge connector to Centronics and provide an extension for the drive select jumpers. The HD-20 of course has that weird proprietary connector with goes to a separate IWM controller board.) As for the rest of the unit, while it may indeed bear some superficial resemblance to the HD20 externally the Rodime unit actually isn't much like it in detail. The HD20 is all plastic with the case split about 1/3rd of the way up and the faceplate attached to the bottom of the case rather than the top, the position of the power supply and the drive are reversed, the Apple unit uses an enclosed Sony power supply module similar in appearance to an Apple II PS rather than a naked board, etc.

So basically it's a knockoff SC-20 that happens to share a weird bit of DNA with the HD20 in the form of that drive mechanism. It does make one wonder if you could swap controller boards from an RO552 that has a broken motor or damaged platter onto an RO652 and make a working Frankenstein drive... which of course will work another month or two before the 652 chassis dies.

 

[Strimkind]

A look inside yours might actually *be* interesting.

Here are the pics as promised. I will say that the case on this unit, in comparison to my Apple SC20 (with those stupid plastic tabs), is a hell of a lot easier to open. Just remove the two mounting screws in the back...

In regards to quality, this particular drive was manufactured in Scotland. Were all Rodime drives solely manufactured there, or were there other manufacturing plants? I ask because there may be a possibility that one plant was notorious for poor quality control, while the others may not have been as unfortunate.

That drives looks familiar

As for the condition, before I sold it to Concorde1993 I checked it with the Rodime software. It passed as I expected it to. It was a very quiet drive compared to most SCSI drives of the time (ie. Quantum).

 

[tt]

Nice! The Rodime HD20 was my first hard drive and worked well for many years and outlasted my Plus.

 

[Concorde1993]

The Rodime HD20 was my first hard drive and worked well for many years and outlasted my Plus.

I'm glad to hear that your Rodime has proven the test of time. I have yet to experience the dreaded quality issues that some of the forum members have had with their Rodimes (although let's face facts - a 25+ year old drive is bound to fail at some point).

Nevertheless, I have backed up all of the data on good quality 3M floppies in case catastrophe strikes.

 

[dorkbert]

True story - during my college days I worked in a computer store (no, not an authorized dealer) servicing Apples. One time a guy came in with a Rodime drive; it had developed "problem" and wanted to know if data is recoverable. We muck around with it using variety of data recovery software and when it refused to play nice, we got annoyed and tap (not smash or punch, just tap) on it a few times and it started working. We pull all the data off the drive onto a new drive and assumed the guy will want the drive replaced. When he came back, we told the guy the drive is on its last leg and won't last more than a week, and a new replacement drive was (insert dollar amount.) The guy find it entirely unacceptable and went home with the drive, and proceed to use it without backing up the data. A few days later he came back insisting that we have assured him the drive would still be good for a few weeks. This time the drive was dead dead dead dead dead...