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What the heck is this hard drive???

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AlexTheCat123:
I've been corresponding with someone who just got four Lisas and is trying to get them working again. I asked him some questions about the Lisas and he sent me a bunch of pictures of them, one of which was this right here.

What is this thing? It looks like what would be best described as an internal ProFile. It seems to use a ProFile-style controller (only one board as opposed to multiple like the Widget) as well as an ST-506 (or maybe ST-412) HDA, but it's mounted internally and uses the Widget-style power and data connectors. The strangeness of the thing, the fact that I've never seen one before, and the handwritten label on the Z8 ROM make me think that it's some sort of prototype, but I'm not really sure what exactly it is. Does anybody have any information on this thing? I'm really curious about it!

stepleton:
It rings a bell --- internal ProFile is what my dim recollection suggests it to be. I thought I'd seen pictures of that PCB somewhere before; I'll keep looking.

In the meantime, refer to LISA_OS/OS/SOURCE-PROFILEASM.TEXT.unix.txt in your Lisa source code and search for "seagate" --- you'll find mention of the "10mb seagate" there. I suppose that could be the ProFile 10 as well, but I note the word "Seagate" on the Z8 ROM in the photo...

stepleton:
Hiding behind the Z8 piggyback ROM, some text:

..PSI
.. CONTROLLER

Going to guess that ..PSI is PEPSI of course.

fri0701:
If you get any more pictures, I'd say anything mentioning "Pepsi" would indicate a prototype. That, or a board number starting with "SK".

Either way, very cool! Make sure to get (and post) some more pictures, and dump the ROM if at all possible!

blusnowkitty:
I think it's pretty obvious it's an internal ProFile drive. My ProFiles are fortunately still disassembled - I'm either waiting for an updated BLU that doesn't terminate on a bad sector during LLF, or hoping to get lucky and not spend a fortune on an Apple III and ProFile card - there's two missing chips on this proto vs. a production external ProFile; what they are I can't tell. Looks like the two MMI chips are present here, and the obvious SRAM and Z8 are present as well.

I scavenged a 2K Z8 from a dead Widget and paired it with a 2716 to make my 5MB LLF ROM. This one is a 4K Z8 with a 2732; didn't the 10MB ProFile need the double-sized Z8 and ROM? I can't find a picture of a disassembled 10MB ProFile, but the 5MB ones we know were based on the ST-506 mechanism. Seagate's 10MB mechanism, the ST-412, has an identical chassis to the 506.

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