16 Jan
2014
16 Jan
'14
5:40 p.m.
Ethan Dicks ethan.dicks at gmail.com
Fri Jan 3 18:03:10 CST 2014
On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 5:57 PM, Charles
<charlesmorris800 at centurytel.net> wrote:
I attempted to order the BC80M from Pinnacle Micro. After several days
of "your order has been received" I got an email canceling the order
without explanation. The online chat was never answered. Finally after
several emails I found out they didn't have the cable in stock (and
they claim their inventory is only updated periodically). So much for
Pinnacle, I don't plan to order from them again any time soon.
Meanwhile, I explained to Continental Computers that my need for the
BC80J-20 was hobby/"vintage" and that I couldn't afford $145. They
offered to sell it to me for $75, still steep but more reasonable. So
I bought it. Put the shipping on my Fedex account.
Plugged it in, hooked up the RL02's... same failure is still there :(
(Fault lamp flashes when BOOT is toggled and the heads start to move,
then the drive goes back to Ready status). Time to start downloading
diagnostics via the console port!
Anyway I was thinking of just bending over and
paying the $57.50. Until I
got to "standard 9-13 day shipping $15.00" and it goes up from there.
Postage rates really went up a year ago. I was shipping things 12-13
months ago, then *bam* double-digit increases.
Perhaps I can locate some surplus multiple
twisted pair cable and carefully
solder the ends to a header connector. There are 13(?) twisted pair
differential signals and the rest are no-connects or grounds. As Henk
pointed out, some of the trouble may be the 6' of unshielded ribbon cable
(which is also smaller gauge than the twisted pairs)...
6 feet?!? I must have read 6 inches (or I had a dust spec on my
screen ;-) That's a lot of unshielded cable to push those
differential signals side-by-side through. My RL8A had 4 to 6
*inches* of flat cable going into the RL8A, then the BC80J to the
drive.
Most folks who collect DEC equipment have a few of the 40-pin shielded
cables. They were used with so many devices. If you don't have one
spare, those shouldn't be expensive to find and try out.
-ethan