FREE: CDC CMD948

[David Barnes]

The CDC Phoenix 9448 was an interesting drive.... I owned 3 of them  
previously....

Here are some tips I learned the HARD way... :)

1- If they have been sitting for any length of time, especially in a  
dusty area they MUST BE PURGED..
here is what I did when I got an unknown drive

- remove the cover
- with power off and unplugged (yeah paranoid) carefully UNPLUG the  
connector for the voice coil, this will keep the heads from loading  
when you power it up and spin up the disk.
- replace top cover, apply power and let blower run for 60 mins.
- insert cartridge and spin up the drive (remember the heads will NOT  
load) and let run for 2 hours.
- spin down, power off , and connect connector above.

Then you MIGHT have a chance of it coming ready and not crashing...

These drives were VERY sensitive about environmentals... be warned..
When they work they work well...


David Barnes

davebarnes AT roadrunner DOT com
OpenVMS  , Tru64 , Solaris , Linux , OS X , SGI Irix



On Dec 21, 2007, at 10:38 AM, Andreas Holz wrote:

> To get manuals and or traning aids would be quite interesting,  
> since I've two of these beasts an some media with software (RT11,  
> Fortran, IMSLIB, ...) which I would like to backup.
>
> Up to now I wasn't able to get one of this drives running.
>
> Andreas
>
>> Forwarding this note about the CDC 9448 for Billy Pettit.
>>
>> De
>>
>> ------- Forwarded Message
>>
>> I did tech support onthese drives for many years, working out of OK
>> City.In fact, I'm still in touch with the original designer - had  
>> nunch
>> with him about a month ago.It's a minor point, but one surface on the
>> cartridge and one on the fixed pack is used for a servo  
>> reference.  So
>> it has two servo surfaces, the only drive I know with that piece of
>> wierdness.Don't know if I still have a manual in the garage or not.
>> Definately do still have the training aides,since I had to teach  
>> it to
>> several OEM's support people. (There were more than 1000  
>> configurations
>> of the Phoenix sold to various OEMs at the time.  I was on the  
>> road 50%
>> of my time for a couple of years.)Can you forward this to the cctalk
>> list?  I can read it but not post messages.  I'm pretty certain it  
>> is a
>> problem with my ISP and not the list.Thanks,Billy
>>
>> ------- End of Forwarded Message
>>
>>
>>
>