For pickup: VAX-11/750 and RK07

Definitely good advice to keep your fingers away from the heads and carriage near the voice coil! I have a movie clip on my site showing the loading of the heads on an RK07. Moving in *fast* from the rest position (far rear) to track 00 and then slowish to the inner track and then back to track 00. After that the READY light will lit. The movement from the far rear to the edge of the platter is quite fast ... But I wanted to see what would happen if you disconnect the head that reads the servo track ... pity that I do not have a movie of that, but I sure don't want to repeat that just for a movie. The heads move from the far rear at full speed all the way to the inner track and then at that same fast speed back outward. Having your fingers there would certainly hurt a lot. Now, without control, just by NiCad pack at brute force, I can imagine that the movement will be even more deadly for your fingers. If you have an RK07 drive, open the rear top lid, use a piece of wood to push down the lock mechanism of the head carriage and carefully try to pull the heads out of their far rear position. If the NiCads are still OK, you will need a lot of force the moment the microswitch clicks. At that point I stopped. I don't know how good the NiCads in that drive are (still need to check that), but it was impressive. I guess the RK05 will behave similar with a good NiCad pack. I have five (!) RK07 drives. I want to keep 3 of them, so sooner or later two drives will have to go (in The Netherlands). I plan to connect them all to the RK07 Field Test Box to see in what shape they are. They should all be OK ... - Henk.