Stripping an RA80

On 31 December 2016 at 17:26 Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1 at gmail.com> wrote: I am probably going to be flamed for this.... My VAX11/730 has an R80 disk drive as you might expect. I dismantled this many years ago to move it and never reassembled it. Over the years (in particular during a house move), the smaller parts (screws, the brackets and clevis pins for the gas struts, and ribbon cables) have got lost. A friend of mine (Philip) was having a clearout and gave me an RA80 (SDI interface, of course). I don't run SDI drives anywhere (I think I have a UDA50 somewhere), but a lot of parts are the same as in the R80. My first thought is to strip this RA80 (that's why I got it!). This will provide me with most of the missing parts (all that I would have to make is the 26 way ribbon to the controller cable -- the 60 way one is still in the R80 chassis). So after stripping I think I would be left with 4 classes of part : 1) Those I need for the R80 -- brackets, screws cables, etc 2) Those that could be useful spares for the R80 : HDA Spindle Motor Belt Belt Tensioner PSU R/W PCB Servo PCB Microprocessor PCB (the ROMs are different, of course, but the the PCB is the same and could be a source of components. I don't swap boards anyway) AC and DC power harnesses Fans Motor capacitor 3) Those that are of no use in the R80, but are not too hard to store Personality board Control panel SDI cabling 4) Those that I don't need and which are a pain to store Cbassis parts. Is there any reason to keep the bare, stripped, chassis, or should I let it go as scrap metal? Does anyone run an RA80 and think any of the bits in list 3 (certainly) or 2 (I may want to keep these, in particular the HDA if it's good) are useful to them? Of course I don't know if the parts are still good. Or should I preserve the RA80 as it is, and just use it as patterns for the missing bits. Try to find a source of the UNC screws, make up the cables, make up brackets, etc. I would only do that if there is a very good reason. -tony