Conner Peripherals CFS850A 850MB (1995)

The CFS850A is one of Conner’s past visions of their affordable drive series, coming in at a whopping 850MB in 1995. Like Conner’s of the past, the same “tub” design remains, with some differences (notably: no anodisation).

A striking red label stands out, alongside a noisy seeking mechanism on top. If you want loud, these may be one of your best choices.

  Drive Attributes
  -------------------------------------
  Conner Peripherals CFS850A
  -------------------------------------
  Capacity      850MB
  Mfc Date      1995 (week 44)
  Format        3.5"
  Interface     PATA
  Platters      2
  Heads         4
  Cache         64KB
  RPM           3600
  CHS           1651/16/63
  Origin        Malaysia (CPM)
  -------------------------------------

The CFS850A comes in with only two platters. By 95′, densities started to improve.

The red label is the star of the show, but Conner’s labels in general lack most useful information. We’re just given the model number & date of manufacture, being week 44 of 1995. This unit was produced in Conner’s factory in Malaysia.

The rear remains unchanged from drives such as the CFS210A/420A, Conner always kept it consistant.

The foam beneath the PCB has rotted somewhat, but still gives away that the base contains no interesting details. It’s quite nice that Conner routed the spindle motor power connections through the same connector as the head-stack, similarly to NEC designs of the same era. It makes PCB removal very easy.

The spindle motor is a standard unit from PM DM-T.

Little changes were made as Conner improved density, the same old Cirrus Logic interface adapter remains. A microcontroller from NCR microelectronics stands in the middle, with codename Ranger. NCR Microelectronics fell off many years ago, but were a key developer of SCSI logic in the early 1980’s. NCR were absorbed by LSI many years ago, LSI having been absorbed far in the past too.

The whopping 64KB of cache is from Samsung, a real champion of performance, wouldn’t you say?

The rear of the PCB has nothing fancy, just some traced branding. No codenames or anything…

While Conner’s series names are often unintuitive, these were released as the Filepro Cabo series back in their heyday. Given the excerpt above, this CFS850A was the second-highest capacity option at the time, falling behind the CFS1275A with three platters.

Comparing proces across the board, Conner were pretty similar to the rest, although a difference of $10USD or so may convince some. Don’t you miss having that much competition in the hard drive space?

The CFS850A may not be the most extraordinary unit, but they boast impressive sounds and are quite fun to use. Personally, in a sea of CFS210A’s and lower-capacity Conner’s, the CFS850A is a nice change of pace. They did a good job, since many still keep on going in the current day.

If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here:

References:

[1] PC Mag (1995) 21st November 1995, 394 pages, Vol. 14, No. 20, ISSN 0888-8507, page 23, Published by Ziff Davis inc., Acquired from: https://books.google.nl/books?id=COEmRfcp2RAC

[1] PC Mag (1995) 6 Feb 1996, 416 pages, Vol. 15, No. 3, ISSN 0888-8507, page 297, Published by Ziff Davis inc., Acquired from: https://books.google.nl/books?id=WVbZSlyrT5kC