Well, I managed to accquire more hardware... This time
in the form of a couple CDC hard drives - one 9775
(Fixed media, 650mb) and one 9766 (300mb removeable).
I also wound up with an 11/84 and a couple RL02's and
one and a half RA80's. (my first Unibus 11, and my
first removable pack drives - yay!) I'm very excited -
this hardware is all new to me, and very different
from what I already have. The 11/84 is much
"beefier"
physically than my wimpy little 11/73, and I've never
owned freestanding hard drives. But - I digress.
I had to drive about 950 miles round trip to pick
these up. Truck rental is very expensive. I drive a
Toyota Camry. So, I borrowed my father's minivan, a
Chevy Venture. I've moved all manner of heavy
hardware, racks, printers, etc in it, and figured that
it would be fine for the task. Getting the stuff in
was pretty easy. The CDC drives were slightly bigger
than I had envisioned, but they fit. We loaded it with
a ramp and a loading dock, and I had two people
helping me, so I didn't fully appreciate just how
heavy the CDC drives were. The PDP-11 rack was a 5
foot rack that was a simple "tip and slide", and some
loose rack mountable stuffs stacked easily next to it.
At this point, I had the van completely crammed - the
passenger seat was pushed forward and angled forward
as far as it would go, with the two CDC drives behind
the seats, then the PDP rack on the passsenger side in
the back, and stuff stacked behind the other drive on
the drivers side. Some disk packs were seat belted
into the passenger seat.
The van rode really low, but was still driveable,
albiet more "sluggish", and I had to top up one of the
tires before driving back. I drove the route back in
one shot - no stops for anything. I didn't get home
until late, and only brought in the disk packs.
It took me the better part of a week to figure out how
to get the CDC drives *out* of the van. I was able to
get the PDP-11 out with little difficulty. It's just a
rack and some loose stuff. No problems there. But
those CDC drives were so heavy that I couldn't even
tilt them much in the van, and they's sunken into the
carpet and weren't able to roll, not to mention the
holes in the floor where the seats normally latch
into. I found the operators manual for the CDC 9775
(BZ7Ex) on bitsavers - it lists the specs for the
drive - weight 639 pounds! Oh, good. At least I think
the 9766 is lighter. A little.
It took a few days to get friends with time to help
me, but we managed to get the drives out of the van
yesterday night. I'll spare you the gory details, but
I removed the power supplies from both drives first,
as well as the doors and panels. When moving these,
heavy is an understatement. Now I just need to get
them into the basement.
So... now does anyone have a scan of the service or
installation manual for a 9775?
I'm sure others have stories about loading hardware in
and out of vehicles... I'll post pictures later...
-Ian