25 Oct
2007
25 Oct
'07
11:56 a.m.
I bought an RL disk pack on Ebay, supposedly for an RL02 drive. It
is a Memorex "Mark III T" with a small label "Made in USA CI
04050" and various previous-owner stickers/scribbles showing first
use in 1983 up through 1985. The shock indicator is not red.
But it won't load in any of my four RL02 drives (the Ready light
never comes on, so track 0 is not being found)!
Since the drive has embedded servo info, so head alignment between
drives is not an issue, there are only two remaining possibilities
that I can think of:
1) the pack is defective (factory servo tracks are trashed), or
2) it is an RL01 (5 Mb) pack, which looks physically identical but
will not work in an RL02 drive.
Any thoughts... Would this be the likely result (no Ready light)
of putting an RL01 pack in an RL02 drive? If so, anyone want to
buy it (or preferably trade for the proper pack)?
It may not be an RL pack at all. Several other companies made top-loading
disk drives that used similar-looking packs, which were not servo-tracked
at all. I seem to rememebr seeing one for the PDP11, I think it was
norminally RK05-compatile.
Often these other drives had a different number of sectors to the RL's as
well. Have you tried counting the notches in the flange of the hub?
If you put one of thse packs into an RL, it never goes ready. Or the
ready lamp flickers.
-tony