So, this is cool:)

[imactheknife]

When I bought a bundle of mac stuff, this was in the bottom of the box. Considering this stuff was stored in a garage for years with mouse shit, dirt, humidity etc I was so happy that she worked. Very cool item to have if you have a 128k or 512k.

 

[dv-]

Is that… a serial port hard drive? That’s pretty neat.

 

[imactheknife]

Is that… a serial port hard drive? That’s pretty neat.

Yes it is a serial port hard drive. Guess the first for the macintosh

 

[David Cook]

Does it work? Do you have the drivers? Do the two serial ports on the back allow two Macs to be connected?

 

[finkmac]

definitely not the first mac hard drive, but an early one for sure. iirc apple specified HDDs should use the serial ports, but a bunch ended up going the HD20 route and using the floppy port.

 

[imactheknife]

Does it work? Do you have the drivers? Do the two serial ports on the back allow two Macs to be connected?

Yes, found drivers online. She works, is 10 meg and has a few partition’s on it.

 

[Juror22]

Simply, incredibly, awesome.
Congrats!

 

[Fred1212]

I like that

 

[robin-fo]

Would be very interesting to reverse-engineer the communication protocol!

 

[stepleton]

I wonder if it would make sense to dump its firmware as well.

I can't imagine it's very fast, but of course LocalTalk file sharing went over the serial port too.

 

[nathall]

That’s too cool. Apple’s original spec was for hard drives to use a serial port. They were Apple’s idea of “external expansion slots.” I have never seen one in person or even in use in a video, though.

 

[PB145B]

Wow, that is amazing! I have been wanting one of the early serial hard drives for a long time for my early Macs. Love collecting and playing around with the early hard drives. Many of them are a lot more reliable than you might think too! I have lots of MFM/RLL drives that still work fine.

Is that actually compatible with a stock 128k as well? If so, then that's even more amazing!

 

[imactheknife]

Wow, that is amazing! I have been wanting one of the early serial hard drives for a long time for my early Macs. Love collecting and playing around with the early hard drives. Many of them are a lot more reliable than you might think too! I have lots of MFM/RLL drives that still work fine.

Is that actually compatible with a stock 128k as well? If so, then that's even more amazing!

I would imagine it is, but havent tried. Maybe this weekend very interesting piece to have for sure. Glad it didnt end up at a recycling centre or stayed hidden in the garage for 20 more years

 

[dv-]

I wonder if it would make sense to dump its firmware as well.

I can't imagine it's very fast, but of course LocalTalk file sharing went over the serial port too.

Digging around in the recesses of my brain here but 1.4MB floppy drives and LocalTalk used to both be good for a shade under 30kB/sec so it’s probably about the same speed as the floppy drive, if not faster.

Totally usable and an appreciable upgrade over swapping 400k disks all day.

 

[pl212]

Amazing to see one of these in the wild... first advertised in July 1984:




The date suggests this was definitely compatible with the 128k. However I shudder to think how MFS would deal with 10 megs of storage.

There's a great writeup on this drive here: Tecmar MacDrive: First Hard Drive for Macintosh. It includes images of the hardware, software, and some real-world impressions of trying to use it.

 

[David Cook]

Honestly, this is just amazing tech. Externally clocked serial @ 700 kbit. Multiple partitions. A 68008 with 16K of RAM. With a little more memory, I can imagine making a 'FastLoad' Commodore feature where the Mac sends new temporary firmware to execute on the drive.

 

[pl212]

A review from the Spring 1985 BMUG Newsletter:

Tecmar MacDrive: (Software version 2.0, is essential!) This drive has most if not all of the features we would look for in a hard drive: It connects through the printer port leaving the modem port free for a modem. Its AppleTalk compatible and provides a builtin print spooler under the control of an onboard 68008 microprocessor. It's small, reasonably quiet, has both a 10MB fixed drive and an optional MB removable cartridge (that can be used for rapid backup). The software drivers allow for variable size ejectable volumes. Up to four can be mounted at a time on a 512K Mac, two at a time on a 128K Mac (in addition to floppy and RAM disk volumes). A desk accessory mount manager would be nice (and was rumoured to be in the works). Unfortunately you can't boot directly from the hard drive, but one nice touch is that the microfloppy boot disk ejects immediately on startup. Until a week ago this is the drive we would have recommended (it is the one we all use). However, version 2.0 of the Tecmar software is incompatible with versions 2.6 and greater of the soon-to-be-released Macintosh finder. We have notified Tecmar of the problems and they say they are working on correcting them. But don't hold your breath: Their head Mac programmer recently left the company.