28 Nov
1999
28 Nov
'99
5:24 a.m.
IMHO, it makes little sense to retain media for
washing-machine-sized
disk drives if you don't retain the drives and maintain them in order to
retain the value of the media. Hindsight is always 20/20, but wouldn't
it make sense to archive data/software on an archival medium, likely, we
hope, to remain useable over time, rather than to store it on what's
intended for on-line storage, and is likely to become obsolete within a
couple of years of when it was developed?
Unless there is no equivalent... I've got the exact problem with the
DECsystem-10 I got earlier this year... it came with two RP06 drives.
They are 3-phase drives. We don't yet have three phase power (or a
close approximation of it), so cannot run the drives. Without the
drives, we cannot even load the microcode for the machine, so it is
a very large paper-weight.
I've been looking of a non-three-phase replacement for the drives, but
we still would need three-phase to get the data off the disks I have.
We have, however, been getting all the data off the tapes so as not
to lose it.
It would be great if there was a massbus interface for a more recent
tape drive, and the same for a disk... it would be neat to be able to
have a DAT tape acting like a TU77 or something supported by the machine,
and a couple of SCSI or even IDE disks acting as RM03 or RP06 disks...
(anyone know of any? Anyone up for the challenge of designing one?)
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
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