31 January 2020, 08:38 | #981 | ||
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In the 90's we benefited from PC users needing ever larger hard drives to run their bloated OS and apps. In 1991 I bought a Quantum 120MB 3.5" SCSI drive for my A3000 for $999. Then the prices started dropping. In 1996 I picked up a 256MB 2.5" drive for my A1200 for $52 in a stock clearance sale. A few years later I got a 1GB 2.5" drive for free from a hapless PC user who had to upgrade his laptop. I still have that drive in my A1200 today, and it's still working perfectly (typically running 5-8 hours a day). Quote:
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31 January 2020, 19:24 | #982 | |
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Any reason on why HD disks are not as reliable as DD disks? |
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31 January 2020, 21:34 | #983 |
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01 February 2020, 11:46 | #984 | |
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It was a shit idea. The drives were extremely expensive compared to their 3.5" equivalents, and many 1200 users went without a HDD because they couldn't afford one of the 2.5" drives. Others did ugly hacks to their case to enable a 3.5" drive to be installed.
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It's not unlike how a Blu Ray is much more sensitive to damage than a CD or DVD. |
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01 February 2020, 12:53 | #985 |
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01 February 2020, 13:27 | #986 | |
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In practise though retrofitting one meant for most of the users brute forcing it in, consequently making it much more of a hassle than it ever needed to be if Commodore had designed the machine to support this. Offering users a limited number of smaller, pricier and slower drives was not an awesome idea, but just another needless way to needlessly handicap the machine. |
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01 February 2020, 13:49 | #987 |
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01 February 2020, 14:10 | #988 | |
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Making the case some millimeters bigger wouldn't have cost Commodore anything; including a slightly more powerful power supply maybe a low one-digit figure - and that probably wouldn't have been even necessary, because they could have picked 3.5" drives with low power consumption for their factory HD models. The pricey 2.5" drives made their A1200HD models expensive. The A1200 was a budget computer with a really good price, but if you wanted a HDD (absolutely necessary already in 1992 for any serious work) it wasn't looking that attractive anymore compared to PCs. IMHO they shoot themselves in the foot with that decision. |
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01 February 2020, 17:38 | #989 |
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Isn't the 2.5HD drives much better (physical) quality then 3.5, or it is a myth?
I always thought (as a kid), that Commodore chooses 2.5 because of quality, but now I am not so convinced about C= decisions. |
01 February 2020, 17:51 | #990 |
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01 February 2020, 18:23 | #991 |
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I have a 3.5" 1.2 GB HDD in my A1200. It fits inside, and it was actually installed in the shop I bought it from, but yeah, it's tight with the space inside. 2.5" HDDs were more expensive, had smaller capacity, and were slower than 3.5" HDD drives at the time when A1200's were still being sold in shops. Same with the accelerator board expansion slot, could have had a little bit more space with the trapdoor.
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01 February 2020, 18:49 | #992 |
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I'm in the "2.5-inch-was-a-huge-mistake" camp. I spent 800DM in 1994 for a 330MB 2.5" harddisk. That was an insane amount of money. The A1200 had more than enough PCB real estate to put a 3.5" IDE socket and power plug on it.
While we are now happy to have PCMCIA on the A600/A1200, that also was a mistake because it was mostly useless at the time. With 3.5" IDE, no PCMCIA, no onboard 68020 (but only CPU-cards) and a scan-doubler it would have been close to perfect. |
01 February 2020, 18:53 | #993 |
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That definitely never ever happened.
Joking aside, 2.5" drives were more shockproof, because they were made for laptops and had smaller discs; but unless you were dropping your Amiga regularly from the table, I guess that wasn't such an important aspect. |
02 February 2020, 00:17 | #994 |
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02 February 2020, 02:47 | #995 |
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3.5 inch hard drives can be different heights. It's nice that you had a nice slim 1gb hard drive but the drive casings used to be taller, and the pcb underneath also took up more space. Back in the day i hooked up a 20mb hard drive using a kit, (specially made ide cable and floppy drive power splitter) and had to cut holes in the case for the ide and power cables because it would not fit. The grille at the back of the A1200 case would not close down over the drive.
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02 February 2020, 09:16 | #996 | ||
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I've seen more hacky, bulky, dremelled solutions than I care to count. It's all needless struggle that could've been avoided if the issue was properly addressed by Commodore. Last edited by jizmo; 02 February 2020 at 09:46. |
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02 February 2020, 10:12 | #997 |
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Don't forget that 3.5in drives needed more power than their smaller counterparts, and tended to run hotter. Plenty of people might have got away with using such a drive, but there's a big difference between "will probably be fine" and "solution that we're prepared to support with a warranty".
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02 February 2020, 11:38 | #998 | |
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It would have reduced the cost of the HD models considerably, and provided better performance as well. |
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02 February 2020, 11:58 | #999 |
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Installed a 3.5" HDD in 1996, no modifications to the chassis were needed.
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02 February 2020, 17:19 | #1000 | |
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Still, I think Commodore and the other manufacturers made a miscalculation. They probably thought that prices would approach those of standard drives pretty fast, which didn't happen - similar thinking may have lead to the inclusion of the PCMCIA port, that, even if it had worked perfectly, would have given access mainly to laptop extensions that carried a prohibitively high price tag for still some years after release of the A1200. And last but not least, by testing the drives for their factory models they could have ensured that they worked reliably by picking suitable drives. I haven't heard of people having problems with their internal 3.5" drives (and some retailers even included them), but of course that may have been already some years later when drives had improved. And hindsight is of course always 20/20... |
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