[TUHS] 3330s, 3340s, Winchesters... (was: /dev/drum)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday, 24 April 2018 at  9:13:41 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 7:43 AM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>  Clem claims that the code name refers to various advances in
>> disk technology first released in the 3330's disk packs.  Wikipedia
>> and my own memory agree with you that Winchester referred to the 3340.
>
> ???Interesting ...   My source was (is) my friend and former colleague from
> Stellar, Russ Robelen, ???who was the HW lead for the 360/50 and the IBM ACS
> systems.   Russ said the original IBM project Winchester  first begat the
> platter (as Noel pointed out was so named because of the 30-30 capacity of
> the original disk) - which showed up in the 3330 disks as well as the
> sealed head stuff that Paul and Greg are talking about.

Hmm.  The earliest 3330s had 100 MB per disk, considerably more than
the 3340.  I had thought that the 3340 had fewer surfaces.  And the
3330s definitely only had one disk per unit, though they brought out
an 8-drive cabinet with a whopping 2.4 GB (by the time I used them).

> What I never asked him, was where Memorex fit it.  It was a somehow
> a joint project with them, and they got at least some of the
> technology -- in fact DEC's OEM for the RP05/RP06 was Memorex [the
> big box of logic on the side of the DEC version was the Massbus to
> IBM I/O logic converter].  It is also true that real lasting piece
> of project Winchester was the embedded (sealed head) stuff that came
> from the 3340.

Yesterday I suggested that CDC might have used the same disk packs as
the 3330, but I'm now very sure that the ones we used came from Ampex.

> I should ask Russ what he remembers, on this.

It would also be interesting to hear if he can shed any light on the
Winchester Boulevard vs. 30/30 controversy.

Greg
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