[Outback Porsche]

The first hard drive I ever maintained was made by Sperry Univac. It had a 10Meg fixed platter (that was regularly wiped with an alcohol swab to remove the dust that gathered on its surface) and a 10Meg removable platter. It sat in a 19" rack and when ever it needed maintenance (like a head alignment) it was placed into a frame (two man lift) and plugged into a purpose built assembly called the 'disk exerciser'. When it was set up to do an 'exercism' the whole assembly would walk across a work bench as the heads would fly back and forth across the platter reading and writing to the various tracks/cylinders. Funny as all fcuk to watch for the first time. Ah, memories of the early '90s. Yep, only 23 years ago.

A couple of years later I had the pleasure to work on DEC RM02s and the very flash RA81s. The RA81s were the first 'winchesters' that I ever worked on. A massive 480Meg.