Thread: Make it Stop
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Old April 17th 19, 09:56 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
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Default Make it Stop

On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 23:13:54 -0400, Flasherly
wrote:

Seagates, early $300 RRL 30Gs,

-
Correction: Those were 30 megabyte RLLs, or earliest entries for home
PC enthusiast's budget, ensuing after a more prohibitive MFM 20
megabyte hard disk, possibly $500.

People ran programs from out of a boxful of floppies with two 360Ks,
and a RF converter for outputing monochrome into a 5" portable
TeeVee;- They were staunch supporters of a coke-a-cola(tm) eye-glass
industry on global networks predating the WWW.

An RLL was plenty big for 5 or 10 megabyte of pre-Zip, LHA or ARJ,
all-night verification efforts promoted by a command switch, to do a
checksum on the integrity of the compressed programs, at 5 mega-hertz
with an 8088, NEC V20 or 30 (6 mega-hertz).

Once they were cold, a field computer box with an inverted keyboard
for a lid, was taken was out of the back of a pick-up bed in the dead
of winter, it had to warm up for half an hour. The RLL platters
needed to expand to room temperature to match the head-travel
tolerance to tracks at a temperature they were formerly written.