"The Hard Disk You've Been Waiting For"

[Chuck Guzis]

On 27 Apr 2010 at 20:53, Steve Maddison wrote:

> It would be interesting, but I'd guess the average file size at the
> time that disk came out was significantly more then ten bytes!

Consider the time and the target audience (S100 users).  Most 
probably running some flavor of CP/M.  So you're dealing with a 
"flat" file system with a fixed number of directory slots (512 was 
common for hard disks; a large file was broken into "extents", with 
each extent occupying its own slot).  So there was a finite limit to 
the number of files that could be placed on such a device.  

I seem to recall also that the official CP/M volume size lmitation 
was somewhere around 8 MB.  Not as restrictive as, say, the Apple II 
scheme of making a (IMI?) hard disk look like 50 floppies, but there 
are limits.  I recall getting in an SA4000-series 14" drive with 40MB 
on it and having to modify the BIOS to partition it into several CP/M 
drives.

At about the same time we were deploying 7 and 14 MB Rodime 5.25" 
drives, I remember that we received a sample drive from Evotek that 
was something like 50MB (had a plexiglas HDA cover, so that was kind 
of cool to watch).   I don't think I ever saw that drive sold.  I 
stilll have the documentation somewhere.

--Chuck