Single sided because they use the Bernoulli effect to raise the disk to the head. So if power fails the disk falls away from the head preventing head crash or media damage
Thanks ... the intent is to document and preserve so that when other people bump into these things they know what it is. It's also fun to compare what we have today vs. what it used to be - Bernoulli Boxes were current technology not that long ago.
@SirFuzzi Just storage. And expensive at that too. In 1987 the single drive version was around $1800, while the double drive version from the video was $2600. Cartridges were $100 to $140 each. These were really good for applications that needed security (lock the cartridge up at night), applications where having a quick backup was good (accounting), and applications where infinite storage was needed (desktop publishing/graphics).
Sorry to bother again, but do you know where I can find the software that allows the box to interface with MS-DOS? I have managed to acquire an A220, the interface card, and some cartridges, but not any of the software.
I just found one of the 10 MB cartridges in my office and your video helped me identify it! I had never seen one before, so thanks for posting this information.
Man, I freakin love DOS and all those hideous rare stuff.. I was born in 89 but where I live computer technologies are kinda expensive so in elementary we still had 80386 and 486 DOS machines with windows 3.11 and DOS for about 2 years until the school got enough money and caught up with the recent tech and I'm still in love with those things, thanks for showing us this huge, creepy drive!
Creepy? No! The technology that made it nearly crashproof while being removable and at speeds similar to a hard drive is very elegant. Remember, back in the mid to late 80s this was top of the line equipment. Anybody who needed to remove sensitive items from the machine at night could do so by locking the cartridges up. Anybody who needed to do backups quickly without touching dozens of floppies would have used these too.
Yes they were known as absolutely durable. Iomega had a winner there, unfortunately their later products (zip, Jaz etc... all had huge problems) if they would have stayed with the bernoully tech and had improved on it they never would have run into the issues they had with later products. I wonder what made them to move away from it with the Zip drives and later Jaz drives?
@8BitDanooct1 It is the Iomega PC2B-50 card that Iomega sold for use with the drive. The drive looks to be SCSI - if you check out the accompanying web page I talk about my attempts to run it with more modern cards. But I do need to go back some time and try it again to see how well it functions with those cards.
Hi, could a 10mb bernoulli disk work in that machine as well? I only have 1, not 2 disks. Also, if it does, where is the best place to get a Bernoulli box? Thank you !!
and yet faster then those floppies we had to deal with. Understand this I had to deal with floppy discs in school, the 3.5" kind and wow they bought then cheap. They kept breaking.
I was wondering if you can help me out on this. I picked one up with some very old backup cartridges, but I don't have an interface card. Do you know how complex that card is or a standard SCSI card could handle it? Do you have the drivers for the cards?
They're like the SD cards of yesteryear. I've always had a soft spot for DOS and its video games. Are these solely storage drives or are there programmed cartridges with software or games on them?
@TheCubanassasin People collect them. Depending on the machine, it might be quite rare and have some historical significance. Don't just throw it away - see if you can sell it on your local Craig's list, give it away on your local FreeCycle, or try to sell it on eBay. (And do some basic research on it first to see if you have a lump of coal or a diamond!)
I have an bernoulli A210H I don't have anything with it except the unit and a disk. Can you tell me what I need to possibly get it operational. I was looking to get it to work with any of my old Macintosh or Apple II.
I would look for somebody who has one connected to a Macintosh. I haven't dug deeply in a while, but the interface is pretty close to SCSI. (I was able to get a 486-66 with a BusLogic SCSI card to talk to it in addition to the Iomega specific card used in the PC XT.)
20 * 1024 * 1024 bytes These things were insanely reliable, and there is a near 100% chance that the disks still work to this day, as long as a kid never found it with peanut butter on his fingers.
These drives are much smaller than the original 10MB drives. I have both the 2x20 and the earlier 2x10 model, and the drives in the 10M version are basically twice as high (I'm gonna go ahead and call them full height and half height 8" drive format...)
Huh. Yeah, that apparently did exist briefly. books.google.nl/books?id=-S4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA47&dq=bernoulli+box&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZ9tzVjp3SAhWEvBoKHSs1CDU4ChDoAQgdMAE#v=onepage&q=bernoulli%20box&f=false It sounds like almost a prototype product.
In July 1985, a Mac single 5MB version cost 1366 dollars, and at the same store a PC dual 10MB system cost 2599 dollars, both street price. books.google.nl/books?id=CC8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=bernoulli+5mb&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLqufdj53SAhWFVxoKHb7IDDUQ6AEILjAF#v=onepage&q=bernoulli%205mb&f=false
It's more correct to say that the people who made the Bernoulli box went on to make the Zip drive ... or at least a corporation with the same name. ;-0 As you can see they are two very different designs with very different target markets.
@igloopost The painful way to do it would be to try to replicate this setup. I have not seen a 20MB 5.25 version of the drive for sale in a while. The best way to do it probably would be to find a data recovery service. If this data is not mission critical and there is nothing "funny" stored on it I can probably do it; send me an email on the side and we can figure out how to do it. -Mike (mbbrutman at gmail dot com )
whats so special about these computers, my dad has a similar computer to this one just sitting in the attic, he wants me to throw it away and might just do that
Single sided because they use the Bernoulli effect to raise the disk to the head. So if power fails the disk falls away from the head preventing head crash or media damage
Thanks ... the intent is to document and preserve so that when other people bump into these things they know what it is. It's also fun to compare what we have today vs. what it used to be - Bernoulli Boxes were current technology not that long ago.
Whoa, those earlier-type Bernoulli cartridges are massive!
I just found some of those cartidges from a storage I'm cleaning @ work, came here to see this and was not disspointed, thanks!
@SirFuzzi Just storage. And expensive at that too. In 1987 the single drive version was around $1800, while the double drive version from the video was $2600. Cartridges were $100 to $140 each.
These were really good for applications that needed security (lock the cartridge up at night), applications where having a quick backup was good (accounting), and applications where infinite storage was needed (desktop publishing/graphics).
Sorry to bother again, but do you know where I can find the software that allows the box to interface with MS-DOS? I have managed to acquire an A220, the interface card, and some cartridges, but not any of the software.
I just found one of the 10 MB cartridges in my office and your video helped me identify it! I had never seen one before, so thanks for posting this information.
Had one of those(on extended loan) when I was a kid. Wing Commander was installed on one disk lol.
Man, I freakin love DOS and all those hideous rare stuff.. I was born in 89 but where I live computer technologies are kinda expensive so in elementary we still had 80386 and 486 DOS machines with windows 3.11 and DOS for about 2 years until the school got enough money and caught up with the recent tech and I'm still in love with those things, thanks for showing us this huge, creepy drive!
I love the sound those drives make when they're running. Nostalgia.. :)
Creepy? No! The technology that made it nearly crashproof while being removable and at speeds similar to a hard drive is very elegant. Remember, back in the mid to late 80s this was top of the line equipment. Anybody who needed to remove sensitive items from the machine at night could do so by locking the cartridges up. Anybody who needed to do backups quickly without touching dozens of floppies would have used these too.
Yes they were known as absolutely durable. Iomega had a winner there, unfortunately their later products (zip, Jaz etc... all had huge problems) if they would have stayed with the bernoully tech and had improved on it they never would have run into the issues they had with later products. I wonder what made them to move away from it with the Zip drives and later Jaz drives?
Ha, I was there and used to repaire these drives in the European subsidiary in Freiburg/Breisgau.Long time ago..
What kind of interface card are you using for this setup? Just a simple SCSI card/cable or something different?
@8BitDanooct1 It is the Iomega PC2B-50 card that Iomega sold for use with the drive. The drive looks to be SCSI - if you check out the accompanying web page I talk about my attempts to run it with more modern cards. But I do need to go back some time and try it again to see how well it functions with those cards.
mbbrutman back when I did some research by reading manuals, I think I figured out the 2x10MB box is SASI and the 2x20 one is SCSI 1.0...
Those disks are freaking huge!
That's a hell of a USB drive you got there :p
Hi, could a 10mb bernoulli disk work in that machine as well? I only have 1, not 2 disks. Also, if it does, where is the best place to get a Bernoulli box? Thank you !!
Enormous! :0 Amazing it's still working fine :D
and yet faster then those floppies we had to deal with. Understand this I had to deal with floppy discs in school, the 3.5" kind and wow they bought then cheap. They kept breaking.
Hi I have three x 5.25 inch 20mb Bernoulli box cartridges that I need to get the data from... do you have any idea where I should start??
cheers
Brian
I was wondering if you can help me out on this. I picked one up with some very old backup cartridges, but I don't have an interface card. Do you know how complex that card is or a standard SCSI card could handle it? Do you have the drivers for the cards?
Noisy, big and old... I love it :)
They're like the SD cards of yesteryear.
I've always had a soft spot for DOS and its video games. Are these solely storage drives or are there programmed cartridges with software or games on them?
@TheCubanassasin People collect them. Depending on the machine, it might be quite rare and have some historical significance. Don't just throw it away - see if you can sell it on your local Craig's list, give it away on your local FreeCycle, or try to sell it on eBay. (And do some basic research on it first to see if you have a lump of coal or a diamond!)
I have an bernoulli A210H I don't have anything with it except the unit and a disk. Can you tell me what I need to possibly get it operational. I was looking to get it to work with any of my old Macintosh or Apple II.
I would look for somebody who has one connected to a Macintosh. I haven't dug deeply in a while, but the interface is pretty close to SCSI. (I was able to get a 486-66 with a BusLogic SCSI card to talk to it in addition to the Iomega specific card used in the PC XT.)
I would have liked to see that directory listing to check the total capacity of those disks. Is it 20 MiB or 20 MB?
20 * 1024 * 1024 bytes
These things were insanely reliable, and there is a near 100% chance that the disks still work to this day, as long as a kid never found it with peanut butter on his fingers.
These drives are much smaller than the original 10MB drives. I have both the 2x20 and the earlier 2x10 model, and the drives in the 10M version are basically twice as high (I'm gonna go ahead and call them full height and half height 8" drive format...)
I'd love to see an earlier 5MB version in use. I've seen references to them and some pictures, but I don't know of any that are running.
Huh. Yeah, that apparently did exist briefly. books.google.nl/books?id=-S4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA47&dq=bernoulli+box&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZ9tzVjp3SAhWEvBoKHSs1CDU4ChDoAQgdMAE#v=onepage&q=bernoulli%20box&f=false
It sounds like almost a prototype product.
In July 1985, a Mac single 5MB version cost 1366 dollars, and at the same store a PC dual 10MB system cost 2599 dollars, both street price.
books.google.nl/books?id=CC8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=bernoulli+5mb&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLqufdj53SAhWFVxoKHb7IDDUQ6AEILjAF#v=onepage&q=bernoulli%205mb&f=false
Cool, love old computers! :)
It's like they crammed a Laser Disc in a floppy disk shell
What's the speed like compared to a hard drive of the time?
Hey I never knew what they did before, I ran across a brand new package of 3 in my office. Do you have a need for them?
Kim T I do
Anyone happen to have the pinout for the 37pin scsi connector?
@8BitDanooct1 Oh nevermind, just got to that part of the video.
is my year of birth :-0 , exelent tecnology
The zip Disk people MADE THAT?!?
It's more correct to say that the people who made the Bernoulli box went on to make the Zip drive ... or at least a corporation with the same name. ;-0 As you can see they are two very different designs with very different target markets.
@igloopost The painful way to do it would be to try to replicate this setup. I have not seen a 20MB 5.25 version of the drive for sale in a while. The best way to do it probably would be to find a data recovery service. If this data is not mission critical and there is nothing "funny" stored on it I can probably do it; send me an email on the side and we can figure out how to do it. -Mike (mbbrutman at gmail dot com )
But that's not an XT XD!... also, I don't think Dan would appreciate that :P.
whats so special about these computers, my dad has a similar computer to this one just sitting in the attic, he wants me to throw it away and might just do that
@danooct1 Email me. :-)
Steal this guy's XT instead: youtube com/watch?v=_Lu0gd1k1D4