Released in 1992, the ST9144 family of drives from Seagate were their latest offerings in the 2.5″ hard drive space, competing with the likes of Toshiba & Conner Peripherals. The ST9144A, unsurprisingly, was the highest-end offering of the pack, reaching 128MB in capacity.
Seagate certainly knew how to make a sleek looking 2.5″ drive.
Drive Attributes ------------------------------------- Seagate ST9144A ------------------------------------- Capacity 128MB Mfc Date 1992-10 (week 43) Format 2.5" Height 19mm Interface PATA Platters 3 Heads 6 Cache 64KB RPM 3450 CHS 980/15/17 Origin Singapore (ST) -------------------------------------
Offering 3 platters, alongside 6 heads, this is the largest capacity 2.5″ drive Seagate produced in this drive family. Per Seagate’s guide, these have a platter density of 40.87MB.
As per Seagate’s usual in this era, the label is practically useless. This drive was manufactured in Singapore.
A busy board, even with the main logic being on the other side!
A lack of clarity on the front label doesn’t stop us from finding out when this drive was made, being in October of 1992, week 43.
Peeking under the PCB reveals nothing much. The head-stack connection pin array is recessed slightly. Sadly, the spindle motor is encased within the assembly itself, resulting in no further details.
We’ve a fairly busy board here, so let’s split it into two halves.
First, an Adaptec interface controller, alongside some Mitsubishi cache. 32KB per chip, two in total! (the other being on the next half) There’s some flash memory provided by Intel, with custom firmware for the 9144A, as indicated.
Jumper settings are as follows:
ST9144 FAMILY
----------------------
Master/Slave Selection
----------------------
Jumper
+------+
| A C |
| B D |
+------+
Jumper for Pins Configuration
A and B C and D
------------------------------------------------------------------
OPEN OPEN Drive is Master, no Slave present
OPEN CLOSED Drive is Master, Seagate Slave drive present*
CLOSED OPEN Drive is Slave to another ST9144A Family
Master Drive
CLOSED CLOSED Reserved Position (Do not use)
Bodge wire galore. J2 is the head-stack connector block. The rest is a mixture of transistor arrays, latches and other miscellaneous logic control. Feel free to analyse further if you wish.
While not a speed demon, this drive continues to function perfectly, near 30 years past its date of manufacture. An impressive feat.
Popular? Perhaps. Common in this day and age? Not so much. Nonetheless, Seagate were clearly masters of producing sleek and quiet 2.5″ drives at the time, with performance taking the hit.
Seagate 9144 Family – Installation Guide (pdf)
If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here:
References:
[1] PC Mag (1993) Volume 12, Number 14, August 1992, Page 170, Vol. 12,Nr. 14, ISSN 0888-8507, Published by Ziff Davis inc., Acquired from: https://books.google.com/books?id=v9TVJ_G_sk8C
[2] PC Mag (1993) Volume 12, Number 14, August 1992, Page 184, Vol. 12,Nr. 14, ISSN 0888-8507, Published by Ziff Davis inc., Acquired from: https://books.google.com/books?id=v9TVJ_G_sk8C