ST-506 hard drive emulation

[Gordon JC Pearce]

Tony Duell wrote:
> 
> That's a secondary issue. Once you have something that looks like an 
> ST506 drive to any controller you care to name, and which stores the 
> bitstream in semicondcutor memory, you can then consider a server that 
> loads images from, say, a SCSI drive into that memory.

I think you're overthinking this.  I can't see it being that hard to 
adapt the mechanical bits of a different drive to a given set of 
electronics.  Come to that, I don't really see how it could be that hard 
to repair ST506 drives, assuming they had not suffered a catastrophic 
head crash.

They were built in relatively dirty environments compared to today's 
clean rooms, out of bits that were very high precision *then* but pretty 
crappy now.  If I can walk into my local SKF or Timken stockist and pick 
up the incredibly obscure bearings for my gearbox off the shelf, why not 
a hard disk?

Gordon.