Hi all, I just came across pictures on the LCM website about their SDS Sigma installation there. On the pictures, one can see 10-platter disk packs in the corner and stored on the disk drives. Did the LCM ever had these in operation, either for data retrieval or even demo purposes? I know of the Jim Austin Computer museum where they fixed a CDC 9766 drive but it suffered a head crash after a few hours according to their description which led to giving up the operation of these drives. Greetings, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

I can't say I blame them.  It was a lot of work to get a drive running after a head crash.  If it was a bad crash, there >could be extensive cleaning to be done followed by replacing one or more heads.  Then the new heads had to be >aligned.  If you hadn't cleaned thoroughly enough, you risked damaging the expensive alignment disk. Once I came back from lunch to see the operators had 3 drives open.  They kept swapping a disk pack which was >giving I/O errors to new drives and were crashing heads along the way due to the damaged disk pack.  I stopped >them before they spun up the pack on a 4th drive.  That wasn't as bad as the time one of them dropped a disk pack >and bent platters.  That ripped heads completely out of the mounting mechanism. Ah, the good old days! Rod

On Jun 2, 2023, at 2:51 AM, P Gebhardt via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: Hi all, I just came across pictures on the LCM website about their SDS Sigma installation there. On the pictures, one can see 10-platter disk packs in the corner and stored on the disk drives. Did the LCM ever had these in operation, either for data retrieval or even demo purposes? I know of the Jim Austin Computer museum where they fixed a CDC 9766 drive but it suffered a head crash after a few hours according to their description which led to giving up the operation of these drives. Greetings, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

cp-v at the LCM, system and swapping on 300MB packs. On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 3:16 PM P Gebhardt via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > Hi Rod, > > I don't blame them either! Operating these drives means having access to > spare heads, alignment equipment and and alignment pack - not taking into > account the work to be put in all of this! > Anyway, thanks for sharing your anecdote with us :) > Greetings, > Pierre > > >> I can't say I blame them. It was a lot of work to get a drive running > after a head crash. If it was a bad crash, there >could be extensive > cleaning to be done followed by replacing one or more heads. Then the new > heads had to be >aligned. If you hadn't cleaned thoroughly enough, you > risked damaging the expensive alignment disk. >> Once I came back from lunch to see the operators had 3 drives open. They > kept swapping a disk pack which was >giving I/O errors to new drives and > were crashing heads along the way due to the damaged disk pack. I stopped >> them before they spun up the pack on a 4th drive. That wasn't as bad as > the time one of them dropped a disk pack >and bent platters. That ripped > heads completely out of the mounting mechanism. >> Ah, the good old days! >> >> Rod >> On Jun 2, 2023, at 2:51 AM, P Gebhardt via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I just came across pictures on the LCM website about their SDS Sigma > installation there. >> On the pictures, one can see 10-platter disk packs in the corner and > stored on the disk drives. >> Did the LCM ever had these in operation, either for data retrieval or > even demo purposes? >> I know of the Jim Austin Computer museum where they fixed a CDC 9766 > drive but it suffered >> a head crash after a few hours according to their description which led > to giving up the operation >> of these drives. >> >> Greetings, >> Pierre >> >> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> http://www.digitalheritage.de >

I am looking for a Digilent Coolrunner-II evaluation kit. If anyone has one they would be willing to part with, please let me know... --tnx --tom