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Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9760

Posted: 09:39am 24 Feb 2023

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This is an interesting blast from the past:

The IBM Microdrive...

I remember those things.
A pal had one of the 4GB iPod's, and they were much desired for those that could afford them.

A whole 4GB of music!
Amazing for the time.

Now, we scoff at anything that has less then 128GB of storage.
But the Microdrive really was a brilliant bit of design, it has to be said.

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8304

Posted: 11:15am 24 Feb 2023

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Those were really nice, but I couldn't afford them. Mind you, I didn't have a CF card camera for very long.

I did have Sinclair microdrives for a while though, and even ran a little "teletext" BBS using three of them with a modified VTX 75/1200 modem. :)

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

pwillard
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Joined: 07/06/2022
Location: United States
Posts: 324

Posted: 11:47am 24 Feb 2023

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I briefly had a Microdrive 5GB USB "thumb" drive for a while when the largest you could buy at the time was maxing out at 1Mb. Seagate, not IBM made it. It worked for about a year and then just died with the click of death. It was cool though.

CaptainBoing

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Joined: 07/09/2016
Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: 12:11pm 24 Feb 2023

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I have a 1GB one on my desk right now. It has a PCMCIA adaptor that goes with it. I used it on my Compaq iPaq (remember those? always said if the mic and speaker positions were reversed they could have been a phone... give it a few years and...)

Just haven't got the heart to throw it away
Edited 2023-02-24 22:12 by CaptainBoing

mclout999

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Joined: 05/07/2020
Location: United States
Posts: 492

Posted: 05:34pm 24 Feb 2023

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I have a 5GB and a 2.5GB drive here on my desk and used them both just a few days ago to backup some files. They are in Seagate USB puck drives. They were call pocket drives but they look like a puck and had an outer shell that rotated around and wound up the very short USB 2.O cable. They are slow as hell. Here is a FleaBay listing of one. https://www.ebay.com/itm/364068314652

They call me Shai-Hulud (The maker)

Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9760

Posted: 11:47pm 24 Feb 2023

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Definitely slow. The video shows just HOW slow they are.
However, as the guy in the video mentions, they were designed to be used for things like MP3 players that were surging in popularity, and you don't NEED a fast read speed to playback MP3 files. The slow copy speed to get the files onto the drive was probably not much of an issue back then, cos capacity was king.

I still think they are an AMAZING feat of miniaturization for the time.

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

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