New answers tagged hard-disk
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I just found a great web page: Disk Drive Prices 1955+, which has one simple chart showing yearly, and in later years monthly, prices of drives. The page was made by John C. McCallum - more details about it on his home page.
Most of the earlier examples are either IBM/DEC drives (not so easily attached to microcomputers) or floppy drives. One that is ...
answered Dec 29 '20 at 18:38
manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
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The first mention I can find for a Macintosh hard drive is in the November 1984 Macworld (magazine). The cover story was "Thd Fat Mac Arrives - 512k". It's an ad from Corvus (in San Jose). From the ad:
A hard disk drive available in 5, 11, 16 and 45 megabyte capacities. The software necessary for communicating with the Macintosh is built into the ...
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In 1985 I bought a Computer memories CM5619 (19 Mb un-formatted) for a bargain price of $1900. At the time thinking only $100/Meg, what a deal.[
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In the early 1980's Lithgow Electronics [based in Greenock - not so far from "Spango Valley with its own railway station "IBM Halt] had the contract to assemble just 5,000 IBM PC's - single floppy drive. We assembled 50,000 that year !
Then we decided to get some for our own use: First addition was a 5mb TallGrass Winchester unit with a tape backup....
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This answer is anecdotal. PC Magazine was not the only monthly rag. There was Byte Magazine. But I remember the price of a hard drive then very vividly.
Remember the IBM-PC came with a Floppy Disk Drive ($6000). Two if you were lavish ($8000). But the clones came roaring in with two drives Standard; so that went away quietly. But then -XT showed up right ...
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Are you limiting your question to "IBM PCs?"
Because hard drives for hobbyists existed long before the IBM PC.
I built my first computer, a Heathkit H-89, from a kit. It included 4kB of RAM! I designed and built 64kB of RAM for it, which I built on perf board with wire-wrap wire.
I had a pair of ONE MEGABYTE 8" hard drives that I bought for it!...
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In January 1983 I bought one of the first ever 5.25 inch Winchester hard disks. It's marketing style launch was called "Shugart's Case for Success" and the SA604, 6 Mega bytes of unformatted storage capacity, came in a briefcase, which I still have. It came with a photocopy style preliminary OEM manual. I have a cover letter dated May 30,1983 ...
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My first HD was 60MB and cost ~$800.00 US. I also got 4MB of memort and that cost ~$1000.00. The mothervoard with a 8MHz CPU(286) was ~$1000.00. About the same time(early 80's) I saw an add for a 300MB full height drive for ~$5K.
Cliff
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I believe hard drives started becoming popular for IBM PC's (and compatibles ;), for consumers, around 1985-ish usually 10-20MB.
To give an idea of the cost in 1987 when they started becoming more mainstream, I was extremely excited to get my first at a computer show - a whopping 40MB for $400. It was a 5-1/4" half-height, loud whirring vibrating beast. ...
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Yep, I was a service manager for one of the first Apple stores (before Apple screwed us and sold through Sears...) The Apple Profile came in 5MB and 10MB and were very slow and prone to failure if moved.
Our service contracts had to specify that we would move the profiles as customers were just unplugging them and moving them while the platters were still ...
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