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Did ProFiles always sound like ProFiles?

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stepleton:
Here's an idle question. The first ProFile hard drive I ever used would have already been about 13 years old when I encountered it, maybe 14. The way ProFiles sound today isn't any different to me now than how they sounded back then, but it occurs to me that I never heard what a ProFile sounded like in 1983. Did they always sound as noisy as they do in this video, or were they a bit less "growly" when new?

rayarachelian:
The very loud jet engine sound isn't the original sound. I have one or two that are like that now, but when I got them ~1988 they were fairly quiet. There's a LisaFAQ entry about quieting them: https://lisafaq.sunder.net/single.html#lisafaq-hw-hd-profile_too_Noisy

The one in the youtube video you link to, I'd consider fairly quiet, but it's hard to tell vs in person.

Weirdly enough these guys are very reliable. I have 4 of them, and 40 years later, they all still work. Widgets, not so much.

I luckily picked up two of them for free from a guy in Yonkers who used them on an Apple ][ and claimed that the iron oxide on them must have gotten worn out or something. Never low level formatted them or anything, just installed LOS on one, and probably Xenix on the other and they worked immediately without any issues. I'm sure they have some spared blocks, but they never gave me an issue.
The original one I had MacWorks on and was using as a Mac until I built a IIcx hackentosh, but that's another story.

Still, these days I mostly use an X/ProFIle and an Aphid as they're a lot faster.

But sound wise, yeah, that's what I remember them sounding like initially, and even today. They're noisy enough that when I was a kid living in my parent's apartment, I couldn't sleep with them on, and had to shut down the Lisa at night and the ProFile.

AlexTheCat123:

--- Quote ---The very loud jet engine sound isn't the original sound. I have one or two that are like that now, but when I got them ~1988 they were fairly quiet.
--- End quote ---

Same experience here; I've got one that sounds like a jet engine and two others that are quiet enough that you don't even notice them after a few minutes, so the jet engine noise was definitely not the original sound. Oddly enough, neither moving the static brush nor leaving it running for three days quieted the noisy one down, so I've just learned to live with it at this point.

blusnowkitty:
Both of mine, despite faults elsewhere, sounds pretty quiet all things considered. The more alive of the two's spindle motor likes to "pulse" loudly for a brief second every once in a while, but nothing alarming I don't think.

compu_85:
I think the motors were never exactly silent. Here's a good video that shows what a low-hour ST506/412 should sound like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOGNFq1w6Dw

Notice you can hear the stepper motor over the spindle motor!

One of my Profiles is a touch louder than that, the rest are quite a bit louder. I swapped some lower-hour disk mechanisms into 2 of them which helped.

I'm still on the hunt for a dead / trashed 506/412 that I could take the motor apart on, to see if the bearings could be replaced....

-J

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