The M2614ESA is a high-capacity drive released by Fujitsu in 1990. It’s a safe assumption that these drives, when new, were quite expensive. Given their SCSI interface, 182MB size and overall form-factor, these were a higher-end option when compared to many other models on the market.
Sadly, not everything can last over 30 years, just like the example in this post.
Drive Attributes ------------------------------------- Fujitsu M2614ESA ------------------------------------- Capacity 182MB Mfc Date 1991-02 Format 3.5" (full/HH) Interface SCSI (50-pin) Platters 4 Heads 8 Cache 512KB RPM 3490 Origin Japan (FCL) -------------------------------------
With four platters & eight heads, this drive sports roughly 45.5MB per-platter.
Translation (label 3):
“This product falls under the category of strategic goods (or specific techology) under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law. Therefore, when exporting this product, or part of it, permission based on this same law is required & must be dutifully obtained. – Fujitsu Limited, Japan”
Like the mechanics of this drive, the labels haven’t had held up well to whatever past abuse this drive experienced.
This unit was produced in February 1991, in Fujitsu’s drive factory in Japan.
As a whole, the construction of this drive is quite neat. It feels very solid.
Beneath the PCB is a Nidec spindle motor, with a nicely shaped piece of insulation material.
The PCB on this example seems to have experienced what looks like silver spray-paint splatters. It’s non-conductive material, but is another strange thing to find on this poorly treated unit.
As expected, the interface adapter & auxilliary logic is handled by Fujitsu’s own chips. All 512KB of cache is provided by S-MOS Systems, who were absorbed by Epson-Seiko in late 1998.
Nothing fun on the rear of the PCB, aside from a large of array of (mostly) passive components.
Please enjoy the pictures below showing the internals of this drive.
It sure is pretty inside…
30 years is a long time for a mechanical device, so not all units can survive such a long time on earth. This poor Fujitsu is one such example, but seeing an inside view is always a plus.
Hopefully more of these can be found in operational condition, even with that task getting harder by the day.
If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here: