I mentioned a while ago remembering a friend's long-ago story about disk
head crashes at DEC, resolved by rotating drive cabinet so platters
aligned with loading dock of old mill building (rather than rotating
perpendicular to dock's orientation). Problem had been head crashes when
trucks backed into loading dock and hit/shook building. I asked my
friend Who Was There (and who spent his career in storage
architecture/design/etc.). His response:
The disk story is, in fact, true. The disks were from Burroughs,
single-platter and huge (3 foot diameter) with a head per track, if I
recall - no seeking. They were in Building 5, just under the loading
docks. They each held about 10MB.
We also received another disk from Burroughs (multiple huge horizontal
platters, seek arms like boxer's arms, heat exchanger) that was so huge,
the freight elevator took it down to the basement lab for testing but
couldn't bring it back up again after - we had to partially disassemble
it and bring it up in pieces. I think it held 50MB.
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