From: "Paxton Hoag" <innfoclassics at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 10:10 PM
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Anyone Have a DEC RX50 Manual?
As far as I
know, there is no locking mechanism to prevent the opening
of the drive slots to access to floppy. I guess you know how that works.
The upper "door" flaps open in the upward direction, the lower
"door"
flaps open in the downward direction.
I remember the drive ribbon cable to be nothing special. Plus you need
the standard 4-pin power supply cable to power the RX50.
I don't know the behavior of the RX50 if powered without ribbon cable.
I normally connect everything before powering up :-)
I also seem to remember the disks are 400K single sided and go in the
drive in opposite direction so you need to remember the orientation of
the floppies.
I believe there are markings on DEC floppies and the drive to indicate
the correct way to insert them.
Just pull on the upper or bottom door from the center. It should pull
open.
pax
--
Paxton Hoag
Astoria, OR
USA
Yeah, I also remember that the floppies are 400 KB.
Regarding insertion orientation (up/down) is easy if you remember that
the drive motor (spindle) is *between* them. And the "bottom" side of
the floppy always goes onto the spindle.
Another "quirk" of the RX50 is that the head movement stuff is also
shared for both heads. So floppy-to-floppy copy can be slow because
the head has to reposition every time the access goes from one disk
to the other.
- Henk.