DEC Pro380 disk drives

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: DEC Pro380 disk drives
>   From: Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com>
>   Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 10:37:58 +0100
>     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>On 07/05/2007 03:06, Charles H. Dickman wrote:
>> Can the Pro380 be used with RX33 drives in place of the RX50? The Pro 
>> technical manual doesn't say anything about the RX33. It also doesn't 
>> say that there is a way to change the floppy data rate, so I am guessing 
>> it does not support them.
>
>I don't think so, but others may know more.

RX33 can be used in a pro380, however it's used as a RX50 with same data rate
and single sided.  The upside is a pair of RX33s will fit and are far more 
reliable and quieter.

>> Can the Pro380 be used with any ST506/ST412 type hard disks or just 
>> RD50, RD51, and RD52? I have a couple RD32 and some non-DEC drives and 
>> am curious if any of the could be used with it. How do you format a 
>> drive for a Pro? I never noticed any support for Professionals in XXDP? 
>>  Was there a utility in P/OS for that purpose?
>
>I guess you need to format it the way you would for an RQDX1, with XXDP. 
>  I do know that it shares some low-level code with the early RQDXs, and 
>uses similar sniffers to determine the drive type, so you can't just use 
>any drive -- it has to look like one of the ones a Pro supports.

Other drives work once formatted.

Allison