Tandon TM383 Disk Drive.

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Mus.Cat. NEWUC:2007.13 Mnfctr: Tandon Date: 1987 Model No: TM383 -
Comp: Disk Drive LENGTH: 145 mm WIDTH: 100 mm HEIGHT: 39 mm Weight: 721g

This is a Tandon TM383 disk drive, I do not know its capacity, or year of manufacture.
I am guessing about 1980. Can you tell me better, please?

Richard Brooks from Vickers Armstrong responded:
"I have just opened one of my old Tandon Data-Pac enclosures and the front of it is marked as 30Meg.
Assuming the drive arm stepper unit is of around the same date as the drive enclosure
the paper stamp on mine has DATE: A27-87."

Many thanks Richard

Also had from Tom Gardner: (I have not edited his email it cannot be bettered.)


BTW, the Tandon TM383, at
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/museum/DASD/200713.htm 
is probably the drive mechanism taken from inside a Tandon Data Pac. A data
sheet is attached.

Tandon sold its HDD business to Western Digital in early 1988 retaining the
Data Pac rights.

The stamp "7288" on the pcb suggests to me the board was manufactured in the
some time in 1988; this is consistent with the A40-87 marking on the stepper
motor being manufactured earlier than the board.  The Data Pac was announced
and shipped in late 1986

According to records such as Disk/Trend, Tandon never sold a TM383 as a
separate product.  Their last 3½-inch products were the:
TM344  2 disk 42 MB
TM346  3 disk 62 MB
TM362R 1 disk 21 MB
TM364  2 disk 42 MB
All four products share the same mechanism and it looks very much like the
mechanism in your pictures.  All four are RLL specified as is the Data Pac.
Comparing the specifications, its pretty clear that the TM383 is a TM344
operated at a lower track density (804 tpi vs 1013 tpi) to get the lower
30MB capacity.  (all capacities formatted)

So if I were u I would change the catalog listing to Data Pac, the year to
1986, and the msec and MB/sec per the spec attached. Then note in the text
that this is the drive mechanism from a Tandon Data Pac, labeled TM383
internally and similar to the TM344

Tom

He even provides a data sheet for the disk drive.

This is the underside.
It is a printed circuit board with all the micro circuitry to make this a complete disk drive.

In the front is the stepping motor which is a brushless, synchronous motor
that divides its revolution into steps.
The drive has two disk platters, 94mm diameter, four heads with 22mm of travel.

The motor turns a pinion that engages with a rack that is part of the head assembly.
You can just imagine the effect of wear on the accurate positioning of the head assembly,
not to mention it is a linear/radial movement with no servo surface so temperature changes
that effected the head assembly and disks would have been additive, not cancelling.

This is a close-up of the head. It is not a thin film head, you can see the copper wire coil.

An end view of the head shows it is quite sophisticated, with two broad outriggers and a central hull with the R/W head.

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