On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 8:37 PM, David Gesswein <djg at pdp8online.com> wrote:
Hopefully
people more familiar with RL01 will chime in. Do RL drives have bad foam
that needs replacing?
I don't remember any major foam issues, certainly nothing like the
RK05. There is usually some coarse foam at the front of the drive, in
front of the HEPA filter, but that's quickly removed and cleaned. The
insides are foam-free IIRC. Lots of hard surfaces to wipe down for
dust, though. I'd certainly do that, including swabbing the tubes
behind the HEPA filter if the drive has been stored for a long time
and you see dust in the pack area (less crud for the HEPA filter to
suck up).
If you get the system up and the pack have interesting
contents I would like
to get a dump at some time.
One does not require a PDP-8 and RL8A to back up an RL01 or RL02 pack.
Any machine can make a block-for-block image copy. It's one command
on VAX/VMS ($ BACKUP/PHYSICAL). If you have another system and
interface, that might be easier than dealing with a medium that's 2.5
times the max size of an OS/8 device.
-ethan