Photo: Red Hill.
Quantum Fireball LCT 10
On release, the LCT 10 family of drives seemed very similar to the original Fireball LCT 8. Capacity was a little higher, but otherwise there was nothing much to notice.
However, the Fireball LCT 10 did not last well. Over the next few years, we saw a remarkable number of failed LCTs come into the workshop, always with the same fault: a burnt-out chip on the circuit board. It was always the same chip, and it was always immediately visible: a good old-fashioned let-the-smoke-out sort of failure.
We sold only a handful of LCT 10s as new drives, but they were quite common on the market and we often saw them in third-party systems.
Illustration: a burnt-out LCT 10 circuit board: it was always the same chip that failed.
| Performance | 1.3 | Reliability | BA |
| Data rate | 297 Mbit/sec | Spin rate | 5400 RPM |
| Seek time | 8.9ms | Buffer | 512k |
| Platter capacity | 10.2GB | Interface | ATA-66 |
| Read channel | PRML | Head technology | MR |
| 5.1 | 5.1GB | 1 head | * |
| 10.2 | 10.2GB | 2 heads | |
| 15 | 15GB | 3 heads | |
| 20.4 | 20.4GB | 4 heads | |
| 30.0 | 30.0GB | 6 heads |