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Minni-Winnie Hard Disk Drive

ORPHANWARE · Mass Storage
Platform, category and status for this entry were derived automatically from the source list and have not yet been checked by hand.
No photographs catalogued for Minni-Winnie Hard Disk Drive yet
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Catalogue IDHW-0397
ManufacturerORPHANWARE
Person or teamJohn Lingrel/Ron Collins
TypeMass Storage (Storage)
Connects viaExternal Expansion Bus
PlatformADAM
StatusReleased
SourceCollectors DB v1.00 Master

Notes

Orphanware's hard disk for the Coleco ADAM, and one of the two names that come up whenever ADAM hard drives are discussed - the other being Micro Innovations' PowerMATE.

What distinguished them

  • The Mini Winnie used MFM drives; the PowerMATE line went to IDE.
  • MFM needs a separate controller and was already old technology by the time these appeared, which is part of why IDE eventually won.

What it meant

  • Megabytes of instant storage on a computer whose own medium was a 256K tape read at 20 inches per second.

ORPHANWARE WAS ONE OF THE ADAM'S MOST PROLIFIC THIRD PARTIES, alongside Eve and Micro Innovations - memory expanders, multi-density drives, speech synthesisers, serial and printer cards and more, all after Coleco had abandoned the machine. "Winnie" is old trade slang for a Winchester, which is what hard disks were called before they were called hard disks.