^^ cool
But NOTHING compared to this one..
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/fastrand.html
Specs:
Capacity: around 90Mb
Drum speed: 880 RPM (yes DRUM, not disk!)
Read/write heads: 64 on a movable boom between the two drums
Transfer rate: about 100KB per second
Weight: about 2,25 Tons
Notes:
Since the UNIVAC 1100 series machines to which the FASTRAND II was connected used 36-bit words rather than 8-bit bytes, it isn't possible to precisely compare the capacity of a device such as the FASTRAND II with contemporary byte-oriented disc drives.
Calculating the total capacity in bits and dividing by 8 yields a total capacity of 99 megabytes, but since UNIVAC software in the FASTRAND era used 6-bit FIELDATA character codes (by the time ASCII came into wide use, most FASTRANDs had been retired in favour of a variety of disc drives), the capacity in terms of contemporary computer documents was 132 million characters. When UNIVAC adopted ASCII in the 1100 series, they stored 4 characters in the four 9-bit fields of each 36-bit word, so the capacity of a FASTRAND II in terms of ASCII characters would be 88 megabytes. The same considerations apply to calculations of the transfer rate.
The FASTRAND II was the second member of the FASTRAND family, and by far the most common. The ill-fated FASTRAND I had only one rotating drum and half the storage capacity. A single massive drum rotating almost 15 times a second acts as a powerful gyroscope which tries to stay in a fixed location with respect to the distant stars.
Unfortunately, the Earth rotates, and this leads to a conflict between the Earthly imperative of motion and the FASTRAND I's desire to stay put, which resulted in the devices tending to move around the computer room.
In the FASTRAND II, the two drums rotated in opposite directions, which cancelled out the gyroscopic effect. The story of the Navy ship which set sail with a spinning FASTRAND only to have it stand on end at the first course change is, as far as I can determine, apocryphal.
Around 1970, the FASTRAND III was introduced. It was physically identical to the FASTRAND II but increased the recording density to from 1000 to 1500 bits per inch, thereby increasing the storage capacity and transfer rate by 50%.
You could attach as many as 8 FASTRAND cabinets to each controller, and the controller could be connected to two separate I/O channels on the computer, allowing two simultaneous data transfers. In addition, each FASTRAND cabinet could position its read-write head boom independently, notifying the computer when it arrived, so all units could be seeking at the same time.
And such delecious hardware did come with a pricetag: (1968 Dollar) $41,680 for the controller and $134,400 for one drive.
