8-bit IDE-XT Hard Drives Demystified

All about the 8-bit IDE-XT (a.k.a. XTA) hard drives and interface cards that are often unknown among vintage computer enthusiasts, or dismissed as rare, proprietary, and unreliable.
A list of all the known IDE-XT hard drives: www.amstereo.org/ide-xt.htm
Video contains clips from Dan Wood, The 8-Bit Guy, Ancient Electronics, and Modern Classic. Thumbnail image from Alexandru Groza.

[@AncientElectronics]

to be fair to the IDE-XT drives, since I made that video I've come across four of the drives. One was a random find on a Goodwill shelf and three I found in PC's I acquired. I have yet to test the one found at Goodwill but of the other three, only one was dead. The other two fired right up. They do seem to be more common than I initially guessed. MY VTI 286 had this odd quark where it refused to boot to any other hard drive than the IDE-XT it came with. I tried multiple 16-bit ISA controller cards and SCSI cards and drives but no luck.

[@999thenewman]

If the drive is serialized or identity matched to the motherboard, then the drive will only work correctly as such. Sometimes made-to-order industrial workstations are like that.

[@TechGorilla1987]

Stepper motors - the music of my ancient peoples.

[@GreenAppelPie]

It’s was cool at the time.

[@Freakopac]

you dont store music in those drives, you MAKE music with it😂😂

[@the_kombinator]

@@Freakopac I had in my possession a 10 Mb Type 1 drive (on my channel I explored it) - You could fit a few MP3s on that double height 5.25 inch drive. :D

[@igorszamaszow171]

Thanks for mentioning 'Ancient Electronics'. At first glance seems like another channel totally up my alley that I was not aware of until today.

[@therealxunil2]

I remember having to PARK my heads. Does that mean I'm ancient? I think it does.

[@the_kombinator]

I've had to do that recently :D Debug command (I'd have to look it up now)

[@prajaybasu]

0:04 sounds like an alarm straight out of interstellar

[@nickwallette6201]

I instinctively heard a rave kick drum. :-D

[@jangelelcangry]

Sounds like 777's Master caution.

[@billp7748]

Without fail, my favorite tech related YT channel. Always look forward to your videos sir. Thanks for all the hard work!

[@bennetfox]

I still remember the drive parameters for the Seagate ST-351A/X, 666 cylinders, 4 heads, and 32 sectors per track. The BIOS in my 286 would lose its mind every once in a while and I would have to enter it manually to get the machine to boot!

[@vwestlife]

Actually it's officially 820 cylinders, 6 heads, and 17 sectors per track. But since it does sector translation, almost anything that adds up to approximately 40 MB will work.

[@danwood_uk]

Interesting info! Those old drives sound fantastic. Thank for the shout-out.

[@Danny-wv8ec]

we've come a long way in storage tech. I remember as a kid when I saw the first USB-Flash 128 MB drive and thought they it more than enough for me.

[@the_kombinator]

My first MP3 player had that size (or was it 64?). When I got my 212 Mb hard disk in 1996 I was like... wow... so much room (compared to my 42 Mb drive in an old 386). It filled up in no time.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I had a 32MB USB stick I saved up for, reasoning carrying ~20 floppies on my keyring made it worth it!

[@the_kombinator]

@@kaitlyn__L I still have boxes and boxes of floppies. Couldn't get the hang of the GOTEK in time I guess ;)

[@juappdev]

I have one of those long card IDE drives for an old amstrad, but not had any luck getting it to work on a more modern system to get data off of it. Such a pain!

[@manolokonosko2868]

Seagate, Phoenix, jumpers, IDE, cards... I haven't seen any of those in over 20 years. Great memories assembling my own PC clones to sell to companies and people. Made a nice amount of money when I was single, awake, and desperate. Now everything fits on a chip. Technology is boring now.

[@nickwallette6201]

I know what you mean. It's amazing and totally banal all at the same time. Probably because it's so ubiquitous, and no longer intended for, or catering to, those who want to tinker with them. It's a full-fledged product meant to be consumed and never opened. I appreciate that in a tool, but as a tinkerer, I feel the loss as well.

[@cvbabc]

Kevin your videos run the entire spectrum from timely and helpful to obscure and obsolete but always entertaining! Also, it seems I know who to go to for "connectors" now....

[@LaurentiusTriarius]

Love the scratchy sound, powerful stuff doing powerful and fast superuser things. (me in 1986) Now I love a silent SSD but I'm old.

[@fhwolthuis]

Oh I was so happy when my first PC, an 286 AT clone in 1991 had an auto park hdd 😂

[@maxtornogood]

I appreciate the retro enthusiasts that try to keep these drives alive, I have a soft spot for retro hard drives like these!

[@JosiahGould]

The Amiga A590 also had a built-in SCSI interface. I use an old Mac drive in mine. The original drive was an XT HDD. Frozen solid.

[@MrDuncl]

This is all modern stuff. Back in 1991 my job was looking after systems that used SMD hard drives with 15" removable platters. They were 300MBytes though. I had to present a training course and people were asking "why are you using these old drives with voice coils? Modern drives use stepper motors." The answer was that PC drives weren't up to anything like the same capacity at that point.

[@stonent]

This prompted me to look up the known pinouts of XT-IDE and regular AT-IDE. The odd numbered pins are almost identical on both standards. But on the XT-IDE, the even numbered pins are all ground, and on the AT-IDE, it adds those extra bits. One would think there would have to be a way to make it work both ways with an adapter and not needing a switchable drive, but there would be translation circuitry needed definitely.

[@KorbenTheFireX]

The intro startled the hell out of me. xD

[@8_Bit]

Very interesting, and I was really surprised to see the defects listed on that Western Digital drive; would they be shipped new from the factory with those defects due to poor yields, or maybe these were refurbished drives resold cheaply?

[@vwestlife]

New hard drives and SSDs still have bad sectors today. They're just mapped out in the firmware so they're invisible to the operating system and user. Old hard drives weren't advanced enough to do that yet.

[@the_kombinator]

I had a Type 1 (10 Mb) MFM drive that I recently built into an Everex 286 and the defect list was empty. I have never seen an empty defect list. Considering the drive was 40 years old, that was amazing. But yes, those defect tables were a common sight in the mid-late 80s.

[@8_Bit]

Very interesting. I didn't own a hard drive until I got a 52 MB (I think) IDE Seagate for my Amiga 500 but that was the late '80s or maybe even early '90s. I guess by then the defects were handled internally.

[@thaddeusmcgrath]

I love computers but the 90's was not affordable for me to own one. I never heard of these or seen so again you blown my mind VWestlife. Thanks!

[@CocoaBeachLiving]

The XT was my first serious pc, wonderful way to start learning about these critters 👍 it's oddly satisfying seeing this hw after 3 decades.

[@mjouwbuis]

Miniscribe 40MB (as used by Philips Canada / HeadStart with an onboard interface) has the most impressive soundtrack though the 20MB seagate does sound very good as well.

[@TheEPROM9]

One of my laptops has such a drive in it but its a voice coil. Laptop from the late 80s. Was suprised it was IDE when I cracked it open upon it ariving at my house. Drive still works to this day. Did a lot of work getting it fully operational.

[@electronash]

How's it going, Mr EPROM? ;)

[@TheEPROM9]

@@electronash Still alive for better or worse. Still doing videos yo

[@electronash]

@@TheEPROM9 Yep, I've been watching a few. ;) I'm still drowing in broken retro machines and other junk here, so I had to have a major tidy-up. lol

[@TheEPROM9]

@@electronash I have my own house now to store all of them in. Arcade Machine will be the next video

[@fsfs555]

That WD drive and others like it weren't really WD drives: they were rebadged holdover designs from Tandon after WD bought them out. Up until then and for a few years after, WD built drive interface and video controller chips before selling off the semiconductor side of the house to focus on hard drives instead. Their first real in-house WD hard drive was probably the WDAC280, an 80MB 3.5" ATA drive that introduced the familiar Caviar name and designs that people knew from the early '90s.

[@vwestlife]

Correct. There was also a 40 MB Caviar drive.

[@paulstubbs7678]

Interesting, I do remember their been issues getting IDE drives running in XT machines, it was something I was going to attempt, but never did.

[@Caseytify]

The more modern XT-IDE card is helpful there, If you don't insist on period authenticity. Has our host pointed out it allows you to attach either a modern IDE or CF card to an 8-bit system. That way you can avoid the control and expense of shopping for ancient MFM or RLL hard drives. Bonus feature: if you get a card that allows you to insert the CF card through the mounting bracket, it is relatively easy to transfer data from a modern system.

[@VandalDecaProductions]

Thanks for posting this, I've been looking all over for info on these drives. Long ago I used to have an '86 IBM PC XT 8088 with a 20 MB hard drive of this type. Based on the few videos I can find, I think it must have been a Tandon TM262 as it sounded exactly like your WD here, but predated WD's buyout of Tandon. Mine also developed a bearing fault after about 5 years that made the drive fail to spin up unless you gave the stepper motor some manual help (which I bet it hated). Really miss the sound of that thing. I can still hear the precise sequence of "chirps" the stepper motor would make during its power-on self test.

[@tucsonorganist]

Wow! Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I remember doing low-level formatting and am glad it's something I've left behind.

[@SudosFTW]

I had an ST351A/X around 2007-2008 I pulled out of a 386 on the side of the road. Should have taken the whole machine. Used the drive for various things including my first real forays into the realm of MS-DOS networking fun. These days it lives in a Tandy 1000 not much unlike yours in Missouri but partitioned for 20MB because there's bad sectors in the middle of the other half, and the owner wants to play it safe.

[@knightcrusader]

A while back I came across a forum thread and a few web pages where people were trying to connect CF Cards to XTA directly using the not-widely-known CF 8-bit mode specified in the standard. If I remember correctly, one person pulled it off by using the XT-IDE BIOS with a modified CF-to-IDE adapter.

[@analogidc1394]

Startup beeps, flashing activity lights and the sounds of spinning hard drives.

[@RetroTechChris]

Excellent video!! Thanks for covering this.

[@LaurentiusTriarius]

I'm surprised they still made them until 1994, surprising since things used to move so fast back then, but then I remember seeing XT's used as cash registers and other "controller" applications until the late 90's. Gamers are really at the cutting edge, I tend to forget that alot. (You got a lot of knawwledge my man, you must read lots of books! Tai and his Lambo would be proud) Glad someone makes these "legacy" vids, even better when it's fun to watch...

[@kd7cwg]

I had one of those wD drives that stopped working (way back in the late 90’s). Figured I had nothing to lose, so I popped the clips, took the top off and gave the head assy a nudge. Started working again, and never failed 🤣 In 92, my mom gave me a packard bell 8088 fir my birthday with an 80mb wD caviar in it with an 8 bit interface card (might have been a wD, but cannot remember). Transferred both it and the hdd to a Tandy 1000tx later on, then the hdd itself to a 486 with a 16 bit isa card.

[@rotwang83]

A friend of mine had a portable PC XT with a hard drive like this. It sounded like a starting airplane 😁

[@HarleyBadger]

Wow those incredible noises bring back memories!

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

0:20 Aaaah! I have one of those WD hard drives! I never ever knew it was 8-bit until now! Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get it to work with my vintage computers!

[@JankPods0201]

There were also 16-bit variants of that drive ending in -A, for AT class systems. Yours is a -X, specifying for XT class systems.

[@the_kombinator]

15:34 - I recently had one of these - that stepper motor actually worked, it was the drive motor that had thrown a bearing or something - it sounded like a grinder. I opened it up and found shavings all over, yet I was still able to pull a DIR command on it.

[@eddieg780]

I remember my sound blaster cards. I think I still have them. Best sound ever.

[@BrassicGamer]

Very interesting! I used the same debug command on my MFM controller. It's amazing the level of engagement that was required of users in the 8-bit PC era.

[@Computist40]

Holy crap, this is an interface I've never heard of. Thanks for the informative video! =)

[@omfgbunder2008]

6:05 I've seen those referenced as ESDI but its interesting to know they're actually an IDE like interface

[@nickwallette6201]

There is an astounding amount of disinformation about this era of drives. It was a period of free-for-all, short-lived, and a long time ago. :-)

[@Caseytify]

I thought that ESDI was distinct from IDE.

[@nickwallette6201]

It is, but a lot of those interfaces are very similar. E.g., ST506 -- the original MFM controller interface -- is still the basis for IDE. The main difference being that the controller moved from a card that went into a slot and communicated raw data to the drive -- to a card on the drive that communicated to the slot using ISA signaling as the protocol. ESDI was the in-between point. I don't know a ton about the specifics -- partially because it's really hard to find detailed documentation on some of those short-lived, relatively unique interfaces.

[@316diag]

IDE just means the adapter board is attached to the hard disk drive frame instead of being a card in an ISA slot. The 40 pin connector is neither IDE or ATA, it's a pin reduced ISA bus connector. ATA is a protocol. Optical drives that connect to the 40 pin ISA connector use the ATAPI protocol on top of the ATA protocol, or rather, it is a Packet Interface extension to it. PCI "IDE" is more accurately PCI ATA.

[@nickwallette6201]

I've felt for a while that once we got to PCI and SATA, the "ATA" part kind of ceased meaning "AT Attachment" and just became a meaningless legacy acronym to link it to the old parallel interface by lineage.

[@AMDRADEONRUBY]

Nice a new video very interesting. Love theses kind of videos. Have a nice week Kevin.

[@minevance9461]

0:04 *starts vibin*

[@Retro_Ken53]

I have a Commodore Colt that I installed a Seagate ST351 A/X in. I had to install a newer BIOS before I could see the full 40MB, but it works very reliably. I should probably keep an eye out for another in case this on dies.

[@SamOfHaywood]

It's funny how seagate and western digital essentially switched roles in being reliable and unreliable

[@timvanrooyen]

Glorious start up sounds

[@hs_doubbing]

I'm glad you made this video! I've regularly heard things about IDE-XT, but I've never had an opportunity to use a drive equipped with it and I've never really learned what the differences were (until now).

[@cjpwolf2436]

I'm happy with the SSD. But this is interesting.

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

I Really Love That 8-bit Sound

[@DeakBrenan]

Seagate did have bad sectors but mapped in replacement sectors in ROM. Sometimes you could format a drive and always at the same point it would skip to the spare sector and back again. This is why you should not do a true low level format because it would wipe the ROM table of bad sectors and try to create a new table. The original table being mode accurate as it was created with diagnostics. Seagate bought out CDC or Control Data Corp. to teach them how to make reliable disk drives.

[@MrDuncl]

At work we had the SMD 300MByte drives, some labelled CDC and the newer ones with a Seagate label stuck over where they had said CDC.

[@davidsucesso2419]

amazing video

[@5argetech56]

And if ya didn't know............... Now ya know! You are a guru of old tech.. Thanks for being you! :) I do remember back then 20 and 40 megabyte drives seemed YUGE.. We have come far!

[@ph2869]

love the sounds!

[@joshpayne4015]

I continue to love your videos!

[@MatroxMillennium]

Heh, the CompuAdd 810 I got from you is the whole reason I have an 8-bit IDE drive

[@Narayan_1996]

AMAZING VIDEO ^^

[@Eyetrauma]

10:35 That typeface is so pleasant looking.

[@D0Samp]

It reminds me of the text mode font provided by VMware virtual machines.

[@nickwallette6201]

Those old Tandy PCs were surprisingly good. I ran into the first one when I was a kid with a clone 386 at home, so I had this mindset of them being slow, poor graphics, better sound than a PC speaker but worse than Sound Blaster, etc. But, with hindsight, and placing them in context of when they came out, I'm actually more impressed by how long they remained viable and what they brought to the table for a relatively affordable price when they were new. I am really proud to have a Tandy 1000 RL-HD now. It's a PCjr, except good. :-)

[@aworminmybook8234]

@@nickwallette6201 true of radio shack / realistic products in general. good value and they held up better than expected.

[@VintageElectronicsGeek]

I used these back when new, 20MB, man thought I had room for days..it was a big step up from 10! Now I sit here with 100TB thinking that's not enough! From about 1983 to 2005, I used to work on computers...now I'm a happy end user. I used to have a garage full of old computer pieces and parts along with full machines such as the PS/1 mentioned in this video and tons of software....when I moved I hauled it all to the dump...little did I know a few years later all that junk turned to gold! Oh, well.... ~Jack, VEG

[@nickwallette6201]

Having given away and thrown away so much of that old stuff, I am furious at my young, naive self.

[@MrDuncl]

If no one had thrown them away they wouldn't be worth anything. My first car, a really popular model back in the 1970s bought for £900 and sold a couple of years later for £400 would be worth tens of £thousands today.

[@oliversakic5907]

Awesome :D

[@DuckGWR]

I have a single IDE XT hard drive in a Tandy laptop - I think it uses a high density connector as well, which is another annoyance. There's some other funky drive in a Zenith laptop I have, but I can't remember if its 8 bit IDE or just a really funky MFM physical interface

[@MrDuncl]

I had a Toshiba T3100 Laptop that used a similar interface. In the pre-internet and nostalgia days I scrapped it when the hard drive failed as I had no idea where I could get a replacement. That laptop was full of non standard parts, using SIMMs with pins on them rather than the more using PCB contacts.

[@jangelelcangry]

0:04 Master Caution alarm

[@Anangelspath]

Any ideas for a good replacement hard drive (and maybe controller?) on a Tandy 1400HD?

[@BCProgramming]

I had a WD drive that looked exactly like the ones in the video- big fat tall ones that seems to have the metal shaped around the platter area. It was 43MB. But it was in a 286 and was attached to a 16-bit controller, so I guess it wasn't one of these special drives.

[@vwestlife]

WD also made IDE-AT versions of those drives. They were originally designed and made by Tandon.

[@humble2246]

Cool

[@rodhester2166]

that seek sound is awesome..

[@CommodoreGreg]

Neat. I didn't know c800:5 was also used on XT IDE. Last time I used that was in 1994 when I messed with an MFM. Got that sucker to take 1:1 interleave though!

[@megatech1966]

Memories🥰

[@BessieBopOrBach]

You mention wanting to put a soundblaster card in that Tandy 1000 -- it might actually come equipped with a (mono only/8 bit) sound chip already! The drivers are out there to make it roughly SB compatible!

[@vwestlife]

Yes, all Tandy 1000s have their own 3-voice sound chip, but I was talking about adding a Sound Blaster card in addition to it.

[@arcticlife]

I had Commodore A590 with 20MB XT drive. It was slow, loud and got really warm after hours of normal use. A590 have SCSI controller onboard so I upgraded to a 540MB SCSI and my Amiga 500 got really fast booting.

[@chainedlupine]

I seriously miss stepper-drive HDDs. Yeah, slow as molasses but the sound they made was just divine.

[@carltonleboss]

That start up beep is very harsh-sounding

[@XX-121]

i see that these old computers weren't effected by the Y2K bug as much as they were wanting us to believe back at the time

[@intel386DX]

What about 16 bit MFM controllers? :)

[@BertGrink]

Weren't those the ones with two cables for each drive, one for data, and one for address/control signals?

[@intel386DX]

@@BertGrink yes. 2 small for data transfer for each drive, and one big for control dasychained for both of them :)

[@BertGrink]

@@intel386DX Ahh, okay; I have only seen one of those drives once, back in maybe 2002 or so, and didn't remember the details very well, obviously. Thanks for the clarification.

[@coolelectronics1759]

I have that same st351 in my arcade machine for game save data. makes the same sounds and everything Its only like 30mb or whatever but it still works fine. You know its doing it's job and working from how loud it is. Had no idea it was that old but I checked and the thing is at least from 1989. Surprised its still working and under windows10 thats nuts! It came out of this compaq portableIII I had a few years ago, old lunchbox type thing with a hellishly red screen. Any idea if I need to worry about parking on these?

[@vwestlife]

No, the ST-351 is auto-parking.

[@the_kombinator]

I might even have one of these in my Juko Nest V 30 - I'll have to put one in an AT machine and see what it does.

[@b2gills]

I have one of those Western Digital stepper drives that doesn't want to work. All I have to do is tap the side of the computer with my palm when turning it on. I just need to break the stiction of the bearings enough for the motor to start moving.

[@organiccold]

I love the noises of these XT drives. :)

[@rodhester2166]

are there any sound cards that have interface for those hard drives,, like the sound cards with interfaces for cdrom drives .. ?

[@alk7934]

Best hard drive spin up noise I ever heard was in an IBM PS/2 model 80 tower we had. It sounded like a ball bearing would drop (and bounce a bit). Never heard anything like it.

[@vwestlife]

That was the head parking mechanism unlatching. A very distinctive sound on those IBM hard drives.

[@wgrantha4438]

12:18 sounds like when you accelerate in a golf cart and then slightly let your foot off the gas.

[@macktheinterloper]

I still have two of these drives in one of my drawers. They were pulled from an IBM PS/1 I owned in 1991. Pretty sure they haven't been spun up since at least 1993. I'm tempted, though sounds like it would take me a while to get all the necessary hardware, and there likely isn't anything worthwhile on them other than book reports and my early foyers into Sim City, Civilization, RRT and my attempts at hacking Dune II so I could spawn Devastators for free.

[@eDoc2020]

I would suggest spinning up your drives even if you don't connect the data interface. This should hopefully help prevent the bearings from sticking. Just make sure you don't permanently un-park a drive.

[@__hjg__2123]

ah, and for a lifetime, I always worried I needed to park the drive.........

[@dh2032]

so can you up grade IDE-XT drive, to something which is not nearly 40 years old? are there any adapters made or being made for this interface, maybe involving "RASBBERY PIE" emulating a drive or something in or is finding a 40 year, one stock drive the only solution at the moment?

[@aworminmybook8234]

saw geoworks on your monitor. i vaguely remember that being a great program. would love it if you did a video on it.

[@derekkerr7053]

I worked for Seagate in Scotland back in the day great company to work for, those were the days.

[@ConsumerDV]

PC Tools? Interesting, looks very much like Norton Utilities. The custom characters are a blast from the past, the last hurrah to make text mode programs a bit more attractive before Windows has become commonplace. Sadly, reprogrammed characters did not work in a DOS window. EDIT: I see in another comment that you used Norton SysInfo and PC Tools SI.

[@ThisGuyFrritz]

I remember how my dad was learning about IBM PCs before getting one, which would be a Commodore Colt (an XT computer). My dad was educated by computer-savvy people, including the employees at computer stores. PCs were more complex to operate than TRS-80s, Commodore VIC-20 and 64s, Apples and other such home computers. When he got an HDD for the Colt, it sure made a difference in loading and saving, compared to using a floppy drive. I wonder if it could be one of those IDE-XTs. The '90s were interesting times in getting those complex PCs to work right. My dad and I even taught people we know how to operate such things, as well as installing HDDs (maybe IDE-XTs, unless they were used on ATs). Then there came a time when I showed my dad some things that he couldn't figure out. That would make me decide to go back to college and get a Bachelor's Degree on some computer stuff. But that's another story.

[@andygozzo72]

yes it is an xt ide, i have a commodore pc10/3 motherboard i 'rescued' from a bin at work, when they were chucking a load of old computers out, wish i'd kept the case and psu as well, i did have it, d'ohh!, but i originally got the stuff just to strip chips off(got a few other boards as well, an epson equity 2, and some goldstar thing seemingly no info at all on the net)... they're basically the same thing internally, i've managed at last to get the board to boot up, it had a stuck reset line, but havent done anything more with it yet, font in 40 column mode (dipswitches on back to set 40 or 80 boot default) is identical to the pet and gives same beep sound 😁 i've been wondering about getting an at ide working on it or at least a cf card, theres one or 2 control lines missing for a cf to ide adapter but thing the extra circuitry can be patched onto the motherboard, biggest problem is the bios as although cf cards can work in 8 bit mode, a command needs to be sent to it first for it to switch over, xt-ide bios as on those isa xtide to cf card adaptors would likely work but i suppose if fitting one of those just for the extra bios, may as well use the interface on that...

[@mrwebber35]

You flashed on the Minscribe @5:22 with it's unique card and power source. I have a Miniscribe 8425 that didn't use the power from the card (didn't have one anyways) but needed the molex power from the MB. I don't understand why these cards have two ribbons? Can these cards have adapters for the other 8 bit HD's mentioned or would you need another card?

[@widicamdotnet]

Damn, now I want to see if I can find all of the pieces of the two Winchester 20MB hardcards that I took apart as a kid after they failed in my dad's Amstrad PC, and see if I can get them to work again... unlikely though. It would be interesting to know what exactly the usual failure mode of these drives is - i.e. if you have a working drive now, should you use it as little as possible to avoid wear (like a monochrome CRT), or can you just keep using it and fix whatever fails (like recapping a board, replacing belts etc)... surely it can't ONLY be a case of a drop of oil for the stepper motor?

[@vwestlife]

Oiling the motor does often get them working again, although not permanently.

[@widicamdotnet]

@@vwestlife Yeah... in those drives that can be (even if just temporarily) revived by oiling the motor, the problem is probably internal lubrication that's gotten sticky over the decades - which means disassembling and cleaning the motor (or replacing it if that isn't possible) would restore the drive fully. (Also, in those cases, it would actually be beneficial for the motor to be exercised often, as it's not wearing out but getting stuck.) I'm wondering if there are any other likely failure modes related to wear or aging of replaceable/fixable components (obviously not counting head crashes, corrosion etc)... I've seen so many vintage computers and their components brought back to life on KZbin that I'd hope for at least a good number of those wonderful sounding (*) XT drives to keep running for another couple decades... :-) (*) well, I'm nostalgic about that seeking sound - I could do without the spinning noise...

[@AveragePootis]

I like how the "8-Bit" part of the thumbnail is from 8-bit guy's logo

[@vwestlife]

Except it's not.

[@AveragePootis]

@@vwestlife hmh, it looks identical

[@vwestlife]

@@AveragePootis I used the Windows System font. He uses the C64 font.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

Those hard drive sounds were truly terrifying. Imagine hearing a modern HDD make those sounds. 😳

[@Caseytify]

Given the state of the art storage solutions include M2 solid state sticks, that would be scary. 😏

[@taptapkingvideo5883]

Is there any way to hook those drives up to a modern computer to transfer data?

[@vwestlife]

The interface cards should work in anything with an ISA slot, allowing you to use a computer at least new enough to transfer the data from it to a USB drive. Or the ST-351A/X drive can be switched into AT mode and then used in any semi-modern PC with an IDE / PATA interface.

[@hicknopunk]

I used RLL back in the day.

[@jussikuusela7345]

Some of the first XTA drives (as well as ATA and some of the ESDI) were mechanically pretty much MFM/RLL drives equipped with redesigned boards. Why waste a crapload of mehanically sound mecahnisms that had already been produced? That can readily be told by them containing a bulky stepper motor and metal strip drive for the heads, with similar looks to one you'd find on a 5,25 inch floppy drive. The voice coil style head movement was already available in the early 90's ATA drives. I have a 40MB Miniscrbe drive which appears to be XTA, with the voice coil mechanism, and I have an Amiga HDD controller that has the option for XTA or SCSI. The latter style of drive is obviously far easier to obtain. Why I think the Miniscribe is XTA, is that it lacks the master/slave jumper, which I haven't failed to find on any functional ATA drive I have encountered, and also it appears that there is some different life to the drive when connected to the Amiga controller, compared to being connected to a newer PC board. Kinda like it was trying to do something, but it never detects as a configurable drive. EDIT: Maybe the reset signal polarity is the culprit, hope I can find a way to alter it. The autopark feature appears to be inherent to the voice coil head movement, it travels home when not powered, but the stepper motor movement does not do it.

[@CarlitoQC]

Hey! I have a 20MB drive mounted on 8bit card on my 'new' Tandy SL/2. I'd like to try oiling the thing up and see if I get lucky since it only make some single TIK sounds every once and then. Any common oil I can try? I can see the drive size after couple of errors in Deskmate but that's it :(

[@korgied]

I'm so used to newer hard drives that those old XT ones always sound so loud that my first instinct is that it's broken. I mean, I actually had an AT clone (which had a hard drive - can't remember what kind but I feel it wasn't that loud) - and 386s and stuff but never had an XT.

[@nickwallette6201]

The whole computer got quieter and quieter over the years, slowly enough that it was hard to notice. The original PC (5150) had an AC-powered PSU fan and a big clunky switch. The floppy seek sounds painful. Even the keyboard made a racket! 10 years later, and the PSU fan, CPU fan, and HDD all blended in to one subtle whine. 10 years after that, and they were merely a whisper. My last PC build was so quiet I legitimately forget it was powered on for months, until I bent down directly in front of the grille and heard just the faintest whirring of the fan. Going back to my retro PC collection illustrates how stark the difference really is.

[@korgied]

​ @Nick Wallette I still like the keyboards - Model M and I wouldn't mind a Model F if not for the different layout. I'm following development on a modern beam switch (IBM used those even before Model F's, but I have never tried them personally) called the Keystone. Unfortunately while I have a couple Cherry switch mechanical keyboards, I don't think any of them feel as good as buckling springs or even Alps keyboards (and yes I've tried like two dozen Cherry-style switches). Any Cherry style switch is slightly better than cheap membrane keyboards but not that much better to me so I'd like the Keystone or I might get a Unicomp sometime (I would get a Mini M, but I've inquired with them about whether I can make the keyboard ignore numlock; no go if I have to deal with numlock annoyances on a mini kb). I don't mind fan noise but I really would not be able to deal with these hard drives, and old floppy drives that would bang against their end stops due to lacking limit switches, and which just had loud steppers in general... I'm sure glad we don't have that anymore. I had an Amiga 500 with a 20MB hard drive, probably the smallest HDD I ever had, but it wasn't THIS loud.

[@JMRSplatt]

Darude on 8 floppy's.

[@Lachlant1984]

Was that Seagate 20 MB hard drive originally in your Tandy 1000RL? I think you showed it starting up in your RL, didn't you? Just how loud is the spindle motor? It sounded very loud in the video, did you just set the microphone volume level quite high?