Hello list,
Yesterday, I was wondering, if there are any multiplatter disk pack production tools known to exist?
There are disk pack inspection and cleaning tools in the wild (also one on eBay for a ridiculously high price) and occasionally, I also saw unused and originally packed disk platters for sale, but these are, to my limited knowledge, worthless if the production and platter alignment tools are missing.
I remember vaguely somebody writing on this list years ago that some last systems were tossed by some company in California. But disk packs were also produced on the European continent and in for instance in Bulgaria(ISOT) for computer disk drives in the federal republic of Germany and the Soviet Union.
I was just wondering about this since it is getting more and more difficult to come across disk packs provided that spare unused platters arw available. The (9)877 for the CDC SMD 80MB drives 9762 and OEMs seemed to have been fairly wide-spread and these still show up from time to time for offer. But the 300MB packs for the CDC 9766 are rare now. Older drives are close to unobtainium. I never came across a five-platter pack for my CDC 854 drive and i have never seen packs for my MMD 844 or my CDC BC3xx disk drive for 200MB disk packs.
The question will rise what I wanna do with these. I have a working 9762 drive and some day, I would like to try to restore the other ones I have. For the SMD drives, I have spare heads and alignment tools and a disk pack cleaner. I don't intend to run them for hours because I don't have a clean room environment that is appropriate to the specs of these drives. I just love these pieces of storage technology and it would be great to at least have one pack for the drives that are missing one.
Any thoughts from the disk experts would be greatly appreciated :)
Greetings,
Pierre
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------http://www.digitalheritage.de
Not sure if my reply made it to the list. Yahoo seems to indicate it didn't -
When they prove idiots will be far less prone to hit me, I'll be for that. I'll still choose to drive myself though.
If you give someone else the keys, you may wind up going somewhere you don't want to. That'a what happens when you trade your autonomy for alleged security. The ****heads can do what they want. That's _their_ choice.
Confirmed that the LINC in question is now at the Computer Museum @ System Source
This one is in great condition (except for the large live spider) Pictures from unloading the truck
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2GvqTQukSEEnyoQp8
Bob Roswell
museum(a)syssrc.com<mailto:museum@syssrc.com>
https://museum.syssrc.com
They write songs, create works of art. They can do a lot of stuff. The question in my mind is can these AI appliances make guesses and are they any good at it.
Anyway how hard would it be for an AI to rewrite a standard MS-DOS to suit a particular machine? Have they reached the level of sophistication whereby they can analyze code and rewrite sections?
Hi list ,
came across this listing:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/354525985222
I just love the engineering quality of these early electro-mechanical systems! Reminds me of the CDC 60x series reel tape drives.
BTW, not affiliated with the seller.
In my point of view, 5000 bucks is a lot of money for these, though...
Greetings,
Pierre
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.digitalheritage.de
This is a strange one. I have a bunch of CD sleeves like this, that I used to use.
https://www.amazon.com/Mediaxpo-Double-sided-Refill-Sleeve-Holder/dp/B002RO…
I’m trying to recover data from a Verbatim DataLifePlus CD, and when I started looking at it, I noticed that it has a cross hatch/herringbone pattern on it.
Has anyone run across anything like this? At first I was hoping to simply wash it, as it seemed like that might be possible. I tried to wash it multiple times, and while it seems a little better, it’s still not clean, and I think that it might actually be etched into the surface, due to a chemical reaction.
Thankfully Toast 14’s “Use Data Recovery” option was able to recover the data, and image the CD-R.
Another problem I’ve found is that you need to use a Mac running a version of MacOS prior to 10.15 if you have HFS formatted CD’s. I bought a nice external drive, since my DVD-RW drive in my 2010 Mac Pro died, planning to use it on my MacBook Pro, only to discover that MacOS 12 wouldn’t read most of my CD’s. You can’t even do a ‘dd if=/dev/disk5 of=test.iso’, as they appear to have broken basic UNIX functionality.
Zane
I am working to understand a TU56 in my possession that came from an
unknown environment. A connecting cable that came with it reads "PDP9" on
one end so I wondered if this is actually associated with the TU56 or just
sitting in the same box before the TU56 came to me. I have read here:
https://gunkies.org/wiki/TU56_DECtape_Transport
That one can have a TU56 with a M531 or a G742 to serve as a bus
converter. THe M531 is for situations where one has a negative logic
controller and the G742 is for when one has a positive logic controller.
Jumping a few steps ahead, if the TU56 was attached to a PDP-9, would it
use a G742 if one tried to attach a TU56 to it? I feel as if the G742
would be used if the TU56 was intended for a PDP8 and not a PDP11, right?
I searched the web and will continue to research but I thought I'd ask
experts here. No, I don't use ChatGPT.
Bill
Other than the media size (8" vs. 5.25"), what are the substantial
differences between WPS-8 and WPS-200? I'm mostly interested in the
software functionality.
Thanks,
Chuck
