[ Retro Scan of the Week ] The Toaster
June 8th, 2015 by Benj Edwards
It burns your disks
I know nothing about this dual removable hard disk device — called “The Toaster” — by XCOMP. The only time I’ve ever seen it is in this ad. But judging by the lightning, it was completely awesome.
It was also completely expensive — about US $6,639.50 when adjusted for inflation.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you ever used a removable hard disk system?
June 8th, 2015 at 6:21 pm
Honestly, I don’t think I ever remember messing with removable hard discs until I got my first LS-120 back in the mid 90’s. I loved the LS-120. I always wanted a Jazz Drive, but never got one.
June 8th, 2015 at 8:48 pm
Never seen one of those before however it does remind me of my Jazz Drive. The removable disk is looks a lot like it anyway. Useless today of course but I can see how having a 10 meg storage device back in 83 could have been very useful, more so being able to swap out that data as needed.
June 8th, 2015 at 9:52 pm
I owned a SCSI based Iomega ZIP drive back around 1995. It’s amazing how far technology has progressed. I remember being amazed back then at the 100 Megabyte capacity of the ZIP disk and now, today you can store several gigabytes of data on a micro SD card.
June 9th, 2015 at 9:33 am
I don’t know if this counts, but I have used removable hard drive chassis systems on a couple of pc’s. It consisted of a 5.25″ bay and the IDE hard drive fit inside an adapter. Once in place, a key was turned to lock it in and give it power. This unit was not hot swappable. When finished, you’d power the computer down as usual, then unlock the bay and pull the drive.
When I worked at ZDS, I saw a few older pc’s made for a government contract that used a Syquest removable cartridge drive. IIRC they were used in Tempest spec shielded systems. After each session, the user would pop out the drive and lock it in a safe.