1 Jun
2011
1 Jun
'11
8:12 a.m.
On 05/31/2011 10:21 PM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
For those of you who have heard about a mythical
SIX BUTTON FRONT PANEL for the BA23,
I have several. They were no so unusual.
Mine allows me a pair of hard disks (half height) and a floppy
in my pedestal 11/53.
the MVII in Ba23 also has it only the disks are rd54 and half height
40mb (swap) plus RX33 (uses a RQDX3).
it does exist and actually works. NOTE that the
first hard disk drive MUST be set to DS3 and the
second hard disk drive MUST be set to DS4.
You will almost certainly destroy the format for
BOTH hard drives if they are both set the same.
Yep. Has to be oddly jumpered.
Allison
A SIX button front panel for a BA23 had been sitting
on my bench of spare parts for more than a decade.
I finally had an opportunity to use it yesterday for the
first time to make a backup copy of an RD51 to a
second RD51 Both READ ONLY buttons operate
independently and can be turned off and on at any
time - as expected, but now verified.
There is a simple work around which requires a bit
of soldering to a short piece of 10 pin cable, but then
the READ ONLY button can't be used very well
and is not independent for both drives. I imagine that
Tony could add a bit more with a switch that would
work much better. If you don't ever use the READ
ONLY button, then the simple work around will
be sufficient.
While I first backed up the RD51 to a TK25 before
I installed the SIX button front panel, being able to
directly copy (and compare) the two hard disk drives
(especially an RD51 which takes under 3 minutes)
is much more convenient.
This is just to let anyone who is interested that if you
are using an RQDXn with a BA23, you actually are
able to place two hard drives in the same box.
If I am also using the RX50, then I usually run extra
long cables out the front of the BA23 and keep the
RX50 outside the BA23. If the BA23 backplane is
full and you are also using a TK70, then I put both
the RX50 and the TK70 inside the BA23 and use
the extra long cables to the hard disk drives PLUS
I use a spare PC power supply for the hard disk
drives so that I don't overload the BA23 power supply.
NOTE that my experiments using a BA123 and ESDI
Hitachi hard drives which tend to run rather hot and
also require their own fans (when I used an external
PC power supply), I found that the TK70 MUST use
the internal power supply from the BA123. I imagine
that the same would apply to the BA23 box for both
a TK50 and a TK70.
Yes, I occasionally do work with real DEC hardware.
Jerome Fine