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How Far Can Your Disk Seek?
In his article T. Kim Nguyen writes:
I remember a story about guys in a lab somewhere playing around
with sending a disk drive's head seeking from first to last
track and back and forth and back and forth... Apparently they
got the timing right and were able to get the entire drive (one
of the big cabinet thingies you put a 10-pound carousel of
disks into) to move around on the floor.
I'm sure that there is a plethora of walking disk drive stories out there...
here's Yet Another Disk Drive Goes For A Walk...
I was part of an OS Enhancements group that was building a multi-CPU
testing system (about 24 computers plus array processors). A large number
of these 300 Meg removable disk pack drives were shared between two cpus.
As part of our work, we did what are commonly called "Thrash Tests" wherein
you seek back and forth between the outermost cylinder and the innermost
cylinder.
Remember that these are VERY quick drives, and that the heads build up an
hellacious amount of momentum.
There was also a night operator that was:
A) Universally disliked
B) Knew almost nothing about computers except how to follow a checklist.
We set up a timed job to run at midnight, just about the time this operator
would be starting his backups.
Along comes midnight, and suddenly all the disk drives in the computer room
start thrashing angrily "Chugachugachugachuga", and rocking back and forth.
Eventually they started walking themselves along the floor.
At the same time, on the operator's console, the screen blanks, and the
following words appear, centered, on the display:
I'm coming to get you.
The operator quit the next day.
-- Kevin Klop
Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
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