Spirit HDA-506 interface for the Amiga 500/1000
Performance wise, it’s hard to know how to rate this: we’re dealing with decades old technology here from the infancy of consumer hard drives. Seek times could be realistically measured in seconds for full disk scans, however sustained transfer rates are fairly good at around 500KB/s. Put into context, that’s over half an Amiga floppy a second, which is the alternative and so in context the performance is good.
This setup cost £500 in 1988 for a 20MB system, or £20 off ebay if you see one. It predates SCSI solutions from other manufacturers by some way, so should not be compared with them. The ST-225 has proved itself to be astonishingly reliable: bearings are a little noisy, but the drive still works and this must be one of the most outstandingly over-engineered drives. I’ve added an ST-251-1 giving me a total of 60MB for my Amiga 1000. The combo has been faultless for over 2 decades, which still amazes me.
| Ratings (in 80s context) for Spirit HDA-506 | |
|---|---|
| Performance | 7/10 |
| Slow, but quick compared to what else is out there. Points dropped for autoboot approach. | |
| Value for money | 8/10 |
| At £500 for 20MB, it’s a lot of money but it’s expandable using off the shelf hardware | |
| Reliability | 10/10 |
| It’s over 20 years old and working perfectly. | |
| Ease of use | 7/10 |
| Software setup is OK. Needs mountlist knowledge (but then there’s no real alternative). It autoboots, but it has its quirks | |
| Overall | 8/10 |
| Overlooked when the GVP and A590 came out, but class leading for a brief while! | |
arg!!!
I want it !
beautifull vintage device.
I own a Golem st-506, 20MB external harddisk for the Amiga.
Everytime I turn it on (once every 2-3 years) it will still work as it did in 1989.
It is a pleasure to see the defected sectors written down on a sticker, and the sectors used instead.
Indeed a very good peace of workmanship!