6 Jan
2015
6 Jan
'15
6:30 p.m.
Hi Rick,
That's a good idea. It should load heads with no problem, but should not be
able to read or write. I would suggest going through all of the servo
adjustments in the PM procedure but would advise you NOT do a head
alignment.
Paul
On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
I have an RK05J drive that has been sitting around
for a long time, and I
want to prepare it for going back into service on my PDP 8/e system.
Here's what I've done so far:
- I have replaced the foam that isolates the blower motor from the
housing, as it had started to deteriorate.
- I vacuumed out the entire drive very carefully
- I removed the head-lock that was put in when the drive was transported
from its original location to my location
- I ran the drive without a cartridge (and not connected to a system) for
about 6 hours with the old absolute filter in place
- I removed all of the circuit boards and cleaned the edge connectors and
sockets
- I tested all of the front panel lamps, and found all to be good
- I replaced the absolute filter and ran the drive for another few hours
to circulate air and get any last particles of stuff filtered out.
- I very carefully cleaned the heads... they were extremely clean. I used
a lint-free swap, and a commercial solution that I have that I've used for
floppy disk head cleaning that seems to work well. I used this solution on
the first RK05's heads, and it worked with no problems. However, the first
drive was in service on the PDP 8/e when I got it, and was running fine.
This second drive came off a PDP 11 system, and has been sitting for a very
long time (years).
I plan on running the drive without a pack in it for about 2 hours before
I try loading a pack.
I'm wondering if there is anything else that I should do before add the
drive to the chain (this would be the second drive on the system)?
I am also wondering, that since I have very few PDP8-sectored RK05 packs,
and a ton of PDP-11 sectored packs, if , when I first power up the drive
after it has been connected up to the RK8E , I can put one of my PDP 11
packs in there and spin it up, if the controller will be able to load the
heads? I'd much rather sacrifice one of these packs if there are
problems rather than risk one of my precious PDP-8 sectored packs.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions/answers.
Rick Bensene