PDP11 adventures

[J Blaser]

On 6/12/06 01:45, "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:

> >> At 8:08 PM +0000 12/5/06, Adrian Graham wrote:
>   
>> >>>  We have some RD53s to test for a customer.....
>>     
> >> 
> >> You have my sympathy.
>   

> Indeed, it looks like the original boot drive (also an RD53) long gave up
> the ghost, which is a shame because it had RT11 5.4 and one of the 
> systems I wrote in the 1980's......


A microVAX II that I acquired earlier this year included a RD53/Micropolis drive.  After reading various posts about these drives I had very low expectations for reviving it and hopefully discovering something interesting on it.

And to make matters more dire, during the pickup, when hefting the BA123 box to load it into the truck, the drive+sled slipped out and fell to the concrete floor, probably about 14".

So, with absolutely no positive expectations, after getting things ready for a quick drive dump by netbooting NetBSD and setting up a remote mount, I fired up the drives.  Lo and behold, it worked!  It spun up nicely, I heard the heads seek to 0 and all was good.  Turned out that the drive only had a minimal Ultrix root filesystem, but I'm quite pleased that the drive still seems to work.  I've fired it up many times since in the past 6 months with no problems.

Here's a suggestion.  Knock that drive hard!  ;)  If the problem is that the heads are 'stuck', it just might kick them off the stop.  If the drive is considered dead, might be worth a try!

J