I registed to a local freecycling group. I receive several tens of
emails each day. 80 percent are wanting and 20 percent are offering. I
would expect the reversed ratio.
vax, 9000
Glad to hear about the card. Thank you, Lyle, for answering what must have
seemed an idiotic question. It looks like my machine will stay with a loose
disk, as the previous owners stripped (what would be) the card guides as well as
the mounting card from it (possibly so that the terrorists would be denied
internal hard drives?) The 370 was intact, though.
- Scott Quinn
>From: "Dave Mabry" <dmabry at mich.com>
>
>Joe R. wrote:
>
>>
>> One of the problems is that the "extra" drives I have use completely
>>different boards from those used in the MDSs, even tough they're both
>>Shugart 801 drives. They even have a lot of differently marked jumpers so
>>comparing the two drives is very confusing.
>>
>> Joe
>>
>>
>>
>>
>Joe,
>
>Are you saying that you have trouble getting some 801's to work in the
>MDS? These are drives that you know are otherwise good? Any chance of
>some photos of the board of those drives? I _think_ I have gotten
>800/801's with three different boards to work. Maybe we can compare
>notes on that. Seems to me that all the different boards have similarly
>marked jumpers, though. So maybe your drives are different than mine.
>
>Dave
>
Hi
There were two or three significant rev changes to the
SA800/801's.
I think only one of these was used with the MDS800's.
It seems like I recall there being a letter after the
number on the drives that distinguished them from the
normal drives. I recall a "R" but I think I may be confusing
that letter with hard drives. It might have been something
else.
Dwight
Are you sure that Drive A on a PC won't work on a straight cable?
Something in the back of my mind says that I used to change the drive
select jumper *AND* make sure a terminator was installed for the floppy
to work fine on a straight cable as Drive A. I do know that not having a
terminator installed (on the last drive of the string) can make for some
really strange and intermittent behavior on both HDs and Floppy Drives.
>
> On the hard drive cable the twist merely changed the drive select signals,
> on the floppy drive cable both the drive select and motor on gets twisted.
> The floppy drive cable must be twisted to have drive A work properly the
> hard drive can work with or without a twist.
>
>
> Randy
> www.s100-manuals.com
>From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com>
>
> I have the schematic of the cable and adapter board somewhere but I won't
>have time to look for them anytime soon. The adapter board has some tricky
>wiring on it and IIRC the cable IS NOT straight through. I've had a hell
>of a time getting non-Intel disk drives to work in the MDSs. I have quite a
>few of the same model drives (with different revision boards) and I haven't
>gotten ANY of them to work in a MDS. Yes, I've set all the jumpers. I've
>spent at least three days trying various drives but never could get one to
>work. My suggestion is to search out an Intel drive in the surplus places.
>Intel sold a LOT of these systems and there used to be a lot of them in the
>surplus equipment places.
>
> Joe
>
Hi Joe
When I worked at Intel, ( I recall ) I was told that the
M2FM drives had a few capacitors changed in the input amp section
to increase the high frequency response. You might compare
the components from an Intel drive with the same model
drive ( mostly SA800's I thought ). It might be resistors
but it seems like I recall being told it was capacitors.
You could then post this for people that were bringing up
their MDS800's but didn't know where to find drives.
If I get a chance this weekend, I'll look at the drives
I have to see what changes there might be.
Dwight
On Apr 7 2005, 13:31, Ashley Carder wrote:
> I actually could use a "3" button if someone has one. I have
> two RL02s and an RL01 on my system. I plan to add a
> second RL01 so I can copy images directly from one RL01
> to another, but I need a "3" button.
I forgot to mention: my problem was exactly the same: two RL02s and two
RL01s, but the pairs were in two adjacent systems. For a while,
instead of a terminator on each pair, I had them connected with a spare
cable (just make sure only one system tries to access the drives at a
time!).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Apr 7 2005, 13:31, Ashley Carder wrote:
> I actually could use a "3" button if someone has one. I have
> two RL02s and an RL01 on my system. I plan to add a
> second RL01 so I can copy images directly from one RL01
> to another, but I need a "3" button.
I now have genuine DEC buttons, but before I got the "2" and "3" I
worked out how the numbers are encoded on the fingers, and made my own
out of Perspex. Each button was made in five parts: four sides, and a
front piece. I cut the pieces from sheet, glued them together with
perspex cement, filed the fingers to the correct length, and cemented a
piece of acetate sheet to the front for the number. The digit was
laserprinted in reverse onto the acetate, so once cemented, it was
protected by the acetate itself. Took an evening to make four of them.
Kludge alert: Before I made the perspex buttons, I used matchsticks
inserted into the finger slots, but I had to re-adjust them
periodically because the vibration made them shift.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
>From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com>
>
>At 08:19 AM 4/7/05 -0700, you wrote:
>>> > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&it
>>> em=5181545036&rd=1
>>>
>>>
>>> Odd - even the board artwork reads Bus Grantosaurus Rex. It looks like
>>> someone made some custom PC Bus Grant boards and needed a laugh. Making
>>> such a board at home would be a simple project.
>>
>>Except perhaps for the gold plating.
>>
>> Vince
>>
>
> That's easy enough. Everybody has a gold tab plated in their garage
>don't they? :-)
>
> Joe
>
>
Hi
One could get one of those gold finger plating repair kits.
They are slow but it can be done.
Dwight
I used to have a copy of the Cipher M990 service manual, and I can't
seem to find it now. Does anyone have a scanned copy?
I'd love a pertec to scsi interface card like the Cipher CSC100 too if
anyone has one they don't need. ;-)
--
Tim Riker - http://rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org
Linux Technologist - Tim at TI.com - http://www.TI.com/
BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun!