RD-53 ?54 RETRY

OK, I got a MicroVAX II with a working RD-54 yesterday! I'm finally up and running with VMS. It's one of the Big ones on casters, I think it's what's called a BA-123 enclosure. I'm happy :^) There is something incredibly cool about a system that has the ability to bill users based on CPU usage! Along with this I got a LOT of other stuff. Amongst it all were several RD-53's, which when I connect them up and try to boot the system from them it gives me a ?54 RETRY. Does this mean that they are bad, or that they are simply not bootable disks? Yes, I realize that the RD-53's are some of the worst disks ever made, but I've got a lot around here right now. I'm hoping to use one of the 53's in my VAXstation II/RC (I also got a full fleged backplane yesterday to swap out with the resin filled one). While I'm asking questions, I also got three non-DEC Hard Drives, I gather they can be used with the MicroVAX's. One is a Imprimis Hard Drive Model Number 94166-182, I've determined it's a ESDI 182Mb HD, I've got at least one or two Plessey ESDI controllers that I picked up a couple weeks ago. How do I go about formating these drives? Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ | | For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. | | see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |