CDC Finch Drive

The Control Data Corporation Model 9410 Finch drive is an eight-inch disk drive that comes in 8MB, 24MB or 32MB sizes, using three fixed platters in a sealed environment. The Finch can be mounted vertically or horizontally and is roughly the same size as an 8-inch floppy drive. Unlike the Hawk drive, which requires an external air filter to be changed, the air in the Finch is recirculated through an internal filter and should require no maintenance. The command and data interface are shared with the CDC Floppy Drive, and up to four drives can be daisy chained and controlled from the same FFC Controller Board.

Connection Interface

There are two different type of connection interfaces: Dash 1 Interface and Dash 3 Interface. The Finch pictured above uses the Dash 3 Interface, which utilizes the pinout shown below.

The Control Board

The Finch drive pictured above was the drive included with the counterfeit chassis we received. Unfortunately, it is non-functional at the moment. The drive will spin up and perform a self-seek test, but it never sends the data ready signal. As such, it was necessary to remove the control board so we could start reverse engineering it and hopefully find the fault. Unfortunately, due to the height of some of the heat-sinks, the front side of the board would not scan clearly like the back side. As a result, I have used a photograph and attempted to clean it up as best as possible. However, the lighting is not quite ideal across the board.

Right click and "Save As..." or "Open Image in New Tab" for full resolution.

Brochure

This brochure is for an earlier model of Finch than pictured above and only features two disk platters for up to 24MB. However, it's still cool to see an old brochure for the drive.

View the full brochure here.

Additional Information

The Finch manuals are available on bitsavers.

Follow this link for more information.