{"id":909,"date":"2012-11-05T12:36:16","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T17:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=909"},"modified":"2012-11-05T14:08:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T19:08:58","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-a-1985-solid-state-disk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/909\/retro-scan-of-the-week-a-1985-solid-state-disk","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> A 1985 Solid State Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/semidisk_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/semidisk_small.jpg\" alt=\"SemiDisk Solid State Disk SSD Disk Drive Emulator Ad - 1985\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>This IS your daddy&#8217;s SSD.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Back in January, I traced the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/835\" target=\"_blank\">evolution of the Solid State Drive<\/a> from its 1978 origins to the present in a PC World slideshow.  From that experience, I learned that SSDs, as a product class, were far older than most people realize.<\/p>\n<p>Case in point: Seen here is an advertisement for a 1985-era SSD called the SemiDisk.  The company behind this early SSD, SemiDisk Systems, sold a wide range of &#8220;disk emulators&#8221; (as they were called back then) for platforms like S-100 bus systems, the TRS-80 Model 2, and the IBM PC.  All of them used solid-state RAM chips to achieve read and write speeds far beyond those of rotating platter drives at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The 2 megabyte SemiDisk for the IBM PC retailed for $1,795 in 1985.  That&#8217;s about $3,860 today when adjusted for inflation.  Amusingly, at that vintage price rate &#8212; about $1,930 per megabyte &#8212; a 256 GB SemiDisk SSD would cost over $494 million today.  Yep, that&#8217;s a 494 followed by six zeroes.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can buy a 256GB flash-based SSD right now for under $180.  Not bad.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From BYTE, September 1985, p.329 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> When did you buy your first solid state PC drive?  How big was it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This IS your daddy&#8217;s SSD. Back in January, I traced the evolution of the Solid State Drive from its 1978 origins to the present in a PC World slideshow. From that experience, I learned that SSDs, as a product class, were far older than most people realize. Case in point: Seen here is an advertisement [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27,26,8,10],"tags":[72,113,133,60,263,261,262],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-technology-commentary","category-computers","tag-72","tag-byte","tag-ibm-pc","tag-retro-scan","tag-s-100","tag-semidisk","tag-ssd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}