30 Jun
2002
30 Jun
'02
10:28 p.m.
On a run to the local dump I came up with a DEC 350. It is missing the
center HD. My buddy who spotted it and pulled it out swore it had the central
section before we lugged it down from a pile of scrap. He gave me the model
so it must have been there. I am debating whether it's worth the effort to go
back and find it or is it not too difficult to replace. It has 4cards in the cage
and the 2 daughter boards.
lawrence
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
1 Jul
1 Jul
5:05 a.m.
--- Lawrence Walker <lgwalker(a)mts.net> wrote:
On a run to the local dump I came up with a DEC 350.
It is missing the
center HD... He gave me the model so it must have been there...
RD51? RD52?
I am debating whether it's worth the effort to go
back and find it or is it not too difficult to replace.
The RD50 is a real Seagate ST-506, the RD51 is an ST-412 and the RD52
is one of several 30MB MFM drives including a Quantum 540. How hard it
is to replace is up to the scarcity of MFM drives in your area.
It has 4cards in the cage and the 2 daughter boards.
Mine has a full boat: a double-card video card set, two CTI bus RAM cards,
a floppy controller and a hard disk controller. I'd give handle numbers,
but they are not here with me.
Those daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K by replacing the
4164 DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2. Not sure if you pull both
cards and install one upgrade or if you can install two 512K cards; haven't
tried it yet.
-ethan
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6:25 a.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
How hard it is to replace is up to the
scarcity of MFM drives in your area.
Does DEC, for example with the RQDX3, only
accept the RD5{0..4} _geometries_ with this
controller or can there be others. Could a larger
drive be used in a "waste some tracks" mode
with the RQDX3?
This all assumes a seperate formatter, mv2000
or XXDDP.
John A.
8:45 a.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
On 2002.07.01 17:25 John Allain wrote:
Does DEC, for example with the RQDX3, only
accept the RD5{0..4} _geometries_ with this
controller or can there be others. Could a larger
drive be used in a "waste some tracks" mode
with the RQDX3?
Hmmm. I dim remember that I have read somwhere on the net, that
the
geometry info is written onto the disk. The RQDX3 reads this and will be
able to use any disk, if it is already formated properly. (E.g. on a
VS2k.)
Ahh: http://vaxarchive.sevensages.org/hw/vs2000/fmtbob.html
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
5 Jul
5 Jul
2:41 p.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
On 2002.07.01 17:25 John Allain wrote:
> Does DEC, for example with the RQDX3, only
> accept the RD5{0..4} _geometries_ with this
> controller or can there be others. Could a larger
> drive be used in a "waste some tracks" mode
> with the RQDX3?
As far as I know, the RD54 (aka Maxtor something or other, or
Priam 519, or other similar) was the largest MFM drive ever made. If you
wanted to use a bigger drive it would have to be something other than MFM
(e.g. ESDI, or better yet IDE).
G
5:10 p.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
--- Gordon Zaft <zaft(a)azstarnet.com> wrote:
>On 2002.07.01 17:25 John Allain wrote:
>
> > Does DEC, for example with the RQDX3, only
> > accept the RD5{0..4} _geometries_ with this
> > controller or can there be others.
With the right formatter (i.e., the Field Service one for the MicroVAX),
you can specify the geometry at low-level format time. With the ROM-
based formatter in the MicroVAX 2000, I _think_ you are limited to DEC
drive geometries and, in many cases, exact models (cf jumper R7 in the
Micropolis drive that's the RD53 (1335?))
As far as I know, the RD54 (aka Maxtor
something or other...
XT2190
-ethan
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11 Jul
11 Jul
8:39 p.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
Gordon Zaft <zaft(a)azstarnet.com> wrote:
As far as I know, the RD54 (aka Maxtor
something or other, or
Priam 519, or other similar) was the largest MFM drive ever made.
Not even close. For example, the Fujitsu Eagle (M2351) had a capacity
of 380 MB, vs. 150 MB for the Maxtor XT-2190. I'm pretty sure there were
other drives using MFM had even higher capacity. Of course, modern drives
use RLL rather than MFM because they can get 50-100% better data density
for a given channel bandwidth. And they use ZBR to pack more data into
the outer cyclinders, whereas MFM drives generally used the same data rate
on all cylinders.
12 Jul
12 Jul
11:15 a.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
--- Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com> wrote:
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Gordon Zaft <zaft(a)azstarnet.com> wrote:
There was a Fuji MFM drive also called the Eagle? When I think of
an "Eagle", I think of the ~10" platter, 10.5" tall, 19" wide
SMD
drive that clocks in around 400MB - I have several of them, and
some SI9900 controllers with Massbus cards.
As far as I know, the RD54 (aka Maxtor
something or other, or
Priam 519, or other similar) was the largest MFM drive ever made.
Not even close. For example, the Fujitsu Eagle (M2351) had a capacity
of 380 MB, vs. 150 MB for the Maxtor XT-2190. I'm pretty sure there were other drives using MFM
had even higher
capacity.
I wouldn't claim that the XT2190 was the absolute largest capacity
MFM drive, but it's pretty close, ISTR. Right about the time that
16 heads by 1024 cyls was about the largest you could get is when
ESDI began to take over the large end of the small computer market
and IDE began to take over the small end.
Of course, modern drives use RLL rather than MFM
because they can get
50-100% better data density... And they use ZBR to pack more data into
the outer cyclinders, whereas MFM drives generally used the same data
rate on all cylinders.
Modern drives do indeed use all those tricks (and some older drives, too;
the Commodore 1541 has 4 bit densities to pack a variable number of
sectors per track depending on the physical track length at a given
radius). The important thing is to not violate the linear bit density
of the media. Once you have that figured out, you can add another sector
every few tracks.
I am fairly certain that all MFM drives use a clocked data rate that
ensures the bits on the inner tracks aren't too close together for
the capabilities of the media and heads to discriminate. It's easier
to build a disk controller when you don't have to calculate on the fly
where your sector might be, but it's a poor use of the disk from a
magnetic domain standpoint.
-ethan
5:26 p.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
Ethan Dicks <erd_6502(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
There was a Fuji MFM drive also called the Eagle?
When I think of an
"Eagle", I think of the ~10" platter, 10.5" tall, 19" wide SMD
drive that clocks in around 400MB - I have several of them, and
some SI9900 controllers with Massbus cards.
That's the one. Definitely MFM.
Not an ST-506 interface, though, which I later realized is what
this discussion is apparently about.
I wouldn't claim that the XT2190 was the absolute
largest capacity MFM
drive, but it's pretty close, ISTR. Right about the time that 16 heads
by 1024 cyls was about the largest you could get is when
ESDI began to take over the large end of the small computer market and
IDE began to take over the small end.
1224 cylinders for the XT-2190. Some controllers couldn't handle that
many; typically they were limited to 1024.
1 Jul
1 Jul
8:42 a.m.
New subject: non DEC drives (was: DEC 350)
Does DEC, for example with the RQDX3, only accept the
RD5{0..4}
_geometries_ with this controller or can there be others. Could a larger
drive be used in a "waste some tracks" mode with the RQDX3? This all
assumes a seperate formatter, mv2000 or XXDDP.
Somewhere I have a set of the sources for the RQDX1/2 boards. They
were designed to recognize certain disks from certain vendors. The
code does not make much attempt to truly determine geometry, it
uses hard-wired values, which is why only certain ones work.
I have no doubt that when the RQDX3 was done it was implemented in
the same way... that only certain disks from certain vendors would
be recognized. To have it recognize another disk, you would have
to add an entry to the disk characteristics table in the source
for the firmware and blast a new set of ROMs.
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | email: gentry at zk3.dec.com (work) |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | mbg at world.std.com (home) |
| Hewlett Packard | (s/ at /@/) |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
10:42 a.m.
Scored !!
I went back to the dump today and found the missing cover-plate but no HD.
BUT there was another 350 complete with face-plate, HD, and cables. It had
a handwritten tape "last used in Dec.xx/99" The RX50s on one had a label
pasted over a previous one dated 22jun1992. possibly reconditioned ?
The previous owners were an international Gas corp. Since this is in the
middle of nowhere, that explains why they wound up here. Likely hooked up
to headquarters.
The cards are labeled 000401, 002004, 001002, 000034. The same on both
machines.
RD51? RD52?
RD52. Quantum 540 full-ht.
I am debating
whether it's worth the effort to go
back and find it or is it not too difficult to replace.
The RD50 is a real Seagate ST-506, the RD51 is an ST-412 and the RD52
is one of several 30MB MFM drives including a Quantum 540. How hard it
is to replace is up to the scarcity of MFM drives in your area.
It has 4cards in the cage and the 2 daughter
boards.
Mine has a full boat: a double-card video card set, two CTI bus RAM cards,
a floppy controller and a hard disk controller. I'd give handle numbers,
but they are not here with me.
Those daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K
by replacing the
4164 DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2. Not sure if you pull both
cards and install one upgrade or if you can install two 512K cards; haven't
tried it yet.
-ethan
What's W1 and W2 ?
There's no KBds. but IIRC from postings here it can use the lk201's that I
have with my Rainbows. I also have VR201 and VR241 monitors which I
believe will work. I have some blank 5 1/4 DEC floppies and from discussions
here I can use a 'bow to format more for them.
I have a DECMATE manual that had system disks but also a demo disk
which would work with my r'bow. I wonder if it might also work with the 350.
With Tony D's strictures in mind I'll move cautiously before trying to fire
them up.
Lawrence
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
1:28 p.m.
--- Lawrence Walker <lgwalker(a)mts.net> wrote:
Nice. Probably the best thing for it.
Two marked jumper positions on the daughtercard.
RD51? RD52?
RD52. Quantum 540 full-ht. Those daughter
cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K by replacing the
4164 DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2. Not sure if you pull both
cards and install one upgrade or if you can install two 512K cards;
haven't tried it yet.
What's W1 and W2 ? There's no KBds. but IIRC from postings here it
can use the lk201's that
I have with my Rainbows.
Absolutely.
I also have VR201 and VR241 monitors which I believe
will work.
Yep - the VR201 will work on any Pro350 configuration. Not sure if
the VR241 will work if you don't have the color option. Again, I don't
have the handle numbers here, but if you have two cards in the CTI cage
with a ribbon cable connecting the two, but attached to nothing else,
you probably have the color option. In fact, with 4 cards total, I'd
suspect you have the color video board set, an RX50 controller and an
MFM drive controller.
I have some blank 5 1/4 DEC floppies and from
discussions
here I can use a 'bow to format more for them.
Yes. You can also use a 5.25" drive in a PC (Teac FD55GFR is one
of the best to have for this) and format *double density* blanks
for it (the coercitivity of the HD media is different than the DD
media - the RX50 uses DD media, formatted single-sided, 80 tracks,
rather than double-sided, 40 tracks like for a PC, but it's the same
media).
-ethan
__________________________________________________
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3:13 p.m.
I accessed the FTP site and downloaded some files from the toolkit. It's been
a while since I used Teledisk so it should be fun. Is Teledisk the best app for
transferring the files. I believe I also have 22disk, RainDos, and Uniform.
Sifting thru the various programs I was very impressed by the possible
capabilities of the 350. It seems quite a bit more powerful than the Rainbow.
I hope it looks for floppies before the passworded HD. They mention that you
can make a new startdsk and link it to the old one bypassing the password.
The default password is SYSTEM according to a file on the FTP site but
doesn't give a substitute for username.
Lawrence
--- Lawrence Walker <lgwalker(a)mts.net> wrote:
Nice. Probably the best thing for it.
Two marked jumper positions on the daughtercard.
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
RD51?
RD52?
RD52. Quantum 540 full-ht. Those
daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K by replacing the 4164
DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2. Not sure if you pull both cards and
install one upgrade or if you can install two 512K cards; haven't tried it
yet.
What's W1 and W2 ? There's no KBds. but IIRC from postings here
it can use the lk201's that
I have with my Rainbows.
Absolutely.
I also have VR201 and VR241 monitors which I
believe will work.
Yep - the VR201 will work on any Pro350 configuration. Not sure if
the VR241 will work if you don't have the color option. Again, I don't
have the handle numbers here, but if you have two cards in the CTI cage
with a ribbon cable connecting the two, but attached to nothing else,
you probably have the color option. In fact, with 4 cards total, I'd
suspect you have the color video board set, an RX50 controller and an
MFM drive controller.
I have some blank 5 1/4 DEC floppies and from
discussions
here I can use a 'bow to format more for them.
Yes. You can also use a 5.25" drive in a PC (Teac FD55GFR is one
of the best to have for this) and format *double density* blanks
for it (the coercitivity of the HD media is different than the DD
media - the RX50 uses DD media, formatted single-sided, 80 tracks,
rather than double-sided, 40 tracks like for a PC, but it's the same
media).
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com 
7:31 p.m.
On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote:
I accessed the FTP site and downloaded some files from
the toolkit. It's been
a while since I used Teledisk so it should be fun. Is Teledisk the best app for
transferring the files. I believe I also have 22disk, RainDos, and Uniform.
Of those listed, I believe that TeleDisk may be your only choice.
Uniform and 22Disk take dead aim at CP/M format disks - with a couple
minor exceptions - and RainDos sticks pretty much to the Rainbow.
TeleDisk is rather more flexible.
- don
Sifting thru the various programs I was very impressed
by the possible
capabilities of the 350. It seems quite a bit more powerful than the Rainbow.
I hope it looks for floppies before the passworded HD. They mention that you
can make a new startdsk and link it to the old one bypassing the password.
The default password is SYSTEM according to a file on the FTP site but
doesn't give a substitute for username.
Lawrence
--- Lawrence Walker <lgwalker(a)mts.net> wrote:
Nice. Probably the best thing for it.
Two marked jumper positions on the daughtercard.
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
RD51?
RD52?
RD52. Quantum 540 full-ht. Those
daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K by replacing the 4164
DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2. Not sure if you pull both cards and
install one upgrade or if you can install two 512K cards; haven't tried it
yet.
What's W1 and W2 ? There's no KBds. but IIRC from postings here
it can use the lk201's that
I have with my Rainbows.
Absolutely.
I also have VR201 and VR241 monitors which I
believe will work.
Yep - the VR201 will work on any Pro350 configuration. Not sure if
the VR241 will work if you don't have the color option. Again, I don't
have the handle numbers here, but if you have two cards in the CTI cage
with a ribbon cable connecting the two, but attached to nothing else,
you probably have the color option. In fact, with 4 cards total, I'd
suspect you have the color video board set, an RX50 controller and an
MFM drive controller.
I have some blank 5 1/4 DEC floppies and from
discussions
here I can use a 'bow to format more for them.
Yes. You can also use a 5.25" drive in a PC (Teac FD55GFR is one
of the best to have for this) and format *double density* blanks
for it (the coercitivity of the HD media is different than the DD
media - the RX50 uses DD media, formatted single-sided, 80 tracks,
rather than double-sided, 40 tracks like for a PC, but it's the same
media).
-ethan
__________________________________________________
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http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com 
2:40 p.m.
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4:28 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
At least. Might be one or two more.
Mine has a
full boat...
There are at least 2 other CTI bus cards out there. One is the console interface for the VAXen that used
the Pro as the
console. If I could work out how to drive it it might actually be useful
as it seems to contain a couple of serial ports and a GPIB interface.
Really?!? I used to have one (my Pro380 was a console to an 8530). I
have not seen it in many years. Wish I had it when I was at Lucent as
a consultant. They had one die and had to have one same-day shipped
from a digital broker - $150 for the card, $200 for
shipping. I did go
home to look for mine - probably could have gotten the $150 and
maybe
a little for delivery. :-(
I had no idea they were so neat. By "seems to contain..." do you mean
that there's a couple of 2661s (or some other UART) and some sort of
GPIB chip? (68488? There was a National Semi one, too, ISTR).
The other (which I am told is difficult to find) is
the Ethernet card.
The elusive DECNA...
-ethan
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2 Jul
2 Jul
9:16 a.m.
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4:46 a.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
--- Lawrence
Walker <lgwalker(a)mts.net> wrote:
It has 4cards in the cage and the 2 daughter boards.
Mine has a full boat: a
double-card video card set, two CTI bus RAM cards,
a floppy controller and a hard disk controller. I'd give handle numbers,
but they are not here with me. Those daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K
by replacing the
4164 DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2. Not sure if you pull both
cards and install one upgrade or if you can install two 512K cards; haven't
tried it yet.
I can't remember how much memory is in each system. But if the
chips are 4164, I do have some 41256 chips I can swap. I might
need some help with W1 and W2.
I will tackle the long e-mail ASAP!!
Have a safe July 4th and regards to your SO!!!!
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
--
If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail
address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk
e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be
obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the
'at' with the four digits of the current year.
10:42 a.m.
--- "Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinepw4z(a)compsys.to> wrote:
I'd be happy to help. It's a two-layer board, so it's not _too_
hard to pull the old chips. The jumpers can be just a pair of
wires (0 ohm resistors are nice - single black band, but not
critical).
Sockets are a good idea, and there's clearance for them - I checked.
For mine, I was going to drop in a bunch of 41256s I pulled from some
MS820 boards about 10 years ago (we needed some BIICs and they were $350
new from DEC, or $50 when attached to a used 2MB memory card ;-). I
have a chip tester and have verified that I've only ever lost one DRAM
that I've desoldered that had its leads intact (and only a few by losing
a lead).
-ethan
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You may remember seeing the PRO350 systems in the
stack in front.
Among other things... I think I recall it.
Those daughter
cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K by replacing the
4164 DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2.
I can't remember how much memory is in each system. But if the
chips are 4164, I do have some 41256 chips I can swap. I might
need some help with W1 and W2.
3 Jul
3 Jul
5:43 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
---
"Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinepw4z(a)compsys.to> wrote:
I'd be happy to help. It's a two-layer
board, so it's not _too_
hard to pull the old chips. The jumpers can be just a pair of
wires (0 ohm resistors are nice - single black band, but not
critical).
Sockets are a good idea, and there's clearance for them - I checked.
For mine, I was going to drop in a bunch of 41256s I pulled from some
MS820 boards about 10 years ago (we needed some BIICs and they were $350
new from DEC, or $50 when attached to a used 2MB memory card ;-). I
have a chip tester and have verified that I've only ever lost one DRAM
that I've desoldered that had its leads intact (and only a few by losing
a lead). Those daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to
512K by replacing the
4164 DRAMs with 41256s and adding W1 and W2.
I can't remember how much memory
is in each system. But if the
chips are 4164, I do have some 41256 chips I can swap. I might
need some help with W1 and W2.
4 Jul
4 Jul
6:44 a.m.
--- "Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinepw4z(a)compsys.to> wrote:
I've been digging through my pile of Professionals this week as a result
of these threads. Turns out I have one nice Pro350 (extended bitmap
card, hard disk controller), one former-console Pro380 and a couple
of diskette-only, lightly loaded Pro-350s (memory and RX50 controller).
For ready-to-go disks, I have an RD50 with P/OS 2.0 (from the console
processor) and an RD51 that won't boot that I _think_ had/has Venix on
it. I will probably scare up an ST225/RD32 for use as an RT-11 disk.
While I was booting the Pro380, the floppy began to seek at a high
rate (didn't sound normal) and the PSU shut down and the white-button
breaker popped. It will not stay in, telling me there's a fatal
short somewhere in the PSU - I was watching it; the VR201 showed the
"d|i|g|i|t|a|l" logo, the RX50 went bananas and it shut down.
The Pro appears to have a spot for a bitmap card or something, on the
front left of the motherboard. Mine is blank. It does have a single
512K daughter card. I pulled it, and dropped it into a Pro 350 for
a test. With one 128K card, one 512K card and as many 256K CTI cards
as I could stuff in there, I got a Pro350 up to ~1.4MB. If I pulled
the RX50 controller (and it didn't whine about that) and upgraded
a 128K card to 512K, presumably, 2MB is about the physical limit of
what fits in there. Since the CTI memory cards are marked "PC 350
Memory", I presume they don't work in the Pro380 (and my testing seems
to suggest that, but I have to re-do things - I appear to have one
256K card that locks up the machine its in).
So... the theoretical (effective) max is 2048K in a Pro350 and 1024K
in a Pro380 (one 512K daughter card and 512K on the motherboard). Does
anyone have any info from the literature to support or refute that?
Also, my extended bitmap card for the Pro350 has a stuck bit and fails
POST. It prints a code which I would post here, but I don't have it
in front of me. I would expect that it's a bad 4164 or a bad multiplexer
or buffer next to the memory area, but I don't want to pull all that RAM
and test it externally if I can narrow the search to a chip or two.
One of my goals here is to put 2BSD on a Pro. Another goal is to set one
up with RT-11. Looks like I have enough parts, but I wanted to consider
the options and figure out between memory and video and processor, which
OS better went with which box.
-ethan
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Ethan Dicks
wrote:
> > Those daughter cards can be upgraded from 128K to 512K...
Jerome Fine replies:
I have enough difficulty with soldering - the reverse is something
I doubt if I will ever want to tackle. If I have a change in the next
few weeks, I will try and look at the memory boards and see what
I have.
2:54 p.m.
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9:33 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Could easily be. I need to get back my security torx (out on loan) before
I can remove the board from the PSU. It's held in place by several
philips-head bolts and one torx with the button in the middle.
Caps are a good guess. There are a couple of large ones near the input
side. Don't know where I'm going to find replacements.
While I was
booting the Pro380, the floppy began to seek at a high
rate (didn't sound normal) and the PSU shut down and the white-button
breaker popped. It will not stay in, telling me there's a fatal
short somewhere in the PSU
Why do I think this sounds like defective capacitors in the PSU box? Can
you get the PSU to run on dummy load (indicating the short is elsewhere
in the machine)? I would guess not.
It does not. With a 5.25" drive as a load or with no load at all,
the breaker pops.
-ethan
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5 Jul
5 Jul
11:58 a.m.
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12:56 p.m.
New subject: Scrap Hard Drive & PC Card Prices?
Anyone know what the current pricing is for scrap hard drives? I'm
guessing I probably have 30 - 50 drives ranging from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2"
drives that are non-working. What about scrap PC cards, and does age
(gold content?) make a difference in what they bring? I am assuming the
cards get bought for the gold scrap, but if there is more to it, I would
appreciate hearing about it!
12:53 p.m.
New subject: Scrap Hard Drive & PC Card Prices?
I would imagine that small quantities of PCBs won't net you much, nor
would the small amounts of HDDs - although the drives would probably be
worthwhile due to their weight.
Jeff
On Fri, 2002-07-05 at 17:56, Marvin Johnston wrote:
Anyone know what the current pricing is for scrap hard drives? I'm
guessing I probably have 30 - 50 drives ranging from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2"
drives that are non-working. What about scrap PC cards, and does age
(gold content?) make a difference in what they bring? I am assuming the
cards get bought for the gold scrap, but if there is more to it, I would
appreciate hearing about it!
6 Jul
6 Jul
12:39 a.m.
New subject: Scrap Hard Drive & PC Card Prices?
On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Marvin Johnston wrote:
Anyone know what the current pricing is for scrap hard
drives? I'm
guessing I probably have 30 - 50 drives ranging from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2"
drives that are non-working. What about scrap PC cards, and does age
(gold content?) make a difference in what they bring? I am assuming
the cards get bought for the gold scrap, but if there is more to it, I
would appreciate hearing about it!
I've used such "scrap" drives to repair otherwise nonfunctional drives
before, so they are not completely useless. I doubt there is much in the
way of valuable materials in the drives, though for some of the early ATA
and RLL/MFM drives, some of the parts on the boards might be useful to
someone who tinkers with electronics. The stepper motors on the early
drives that didn't use a voice coil to move the heads, and the powerful
magnets in later drives might also be useful to someone who experiments.
I think you could probably get more cash for a pile of scrap lead or
lead-zinc batteries then you could get for a pile of old nonworking hard
drives...
I don't know about other folks here on the list, but I very often scrounge
(and sometimes buy) lots of old cards (PC/AT included) to upgrade and
maintain older systems. There really isn't much in the way of gold in
individual boards, so the real scrapers are going to be buying 1000s of
pounds of old boards, not just a few boards at a time...
-Toth
5:30 a.m.
New subject: Scrap Hard Drive & PC Card Prices?
I was offered about $0.15 per pound for the hard drives a while ago and
$1.00 per pound for the circuit boards. Since I probably have about 500
- 1000 pounds of drives and cards, it is something worth looking into
:). Right now, this excess is too much of a distraction and slows down
getting other stuff done. Additionally, I've been throwing out stuff
(non computer related) and saving the gold connectors, gold plated
boards, etc. without any idea of what it might be worth. Time to find
out :).
Tothwolf wrote:
On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Marvin Johnston wrote:
Anyone know what the current pricing is for scrap
hard drives? I'm
guessing I probably have 30 - 50 drives ranging from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2"
drives that are non-working. What about scrap PC cards, and does age
(gold content?) make a difference in what they bring? I am assuming
the cards get bought for the gold scrap, but if there is more to it, I
would appreciate hearing about it!
I've used such "scrap" drives to repair otherwise nonfunctional drives
before, so they are not completely useless. I doubt there is much in the
way of valuable materials in the drives, though for some of the early ATA
and RLL/MFM drives, some of the parts on the boards might be useful to
someone who tinkers with electronics. The stepper motors on the early
drives that didn't use a voice coil to move the heads, and the powerful
magnets in later drives might also be useful to someone who experiments.
I think you could probably get more cash for a pile of scrap lead or
lead-zinc batteries then you could get for a pile of old nonworking hard
drives...
I don't know about other folks here on the list, but I very often scrounge
(and sometimes buy) lots of old cards (PC/AT included) to upgrade and
maintain older systems. There really isn't much in the way of gold in
individual boards, so the real scrapers are going to be buying 1000s of
pounds of old boards, not just a few boards at a time...
-Toth
1 Jul
1 Jul
11:33 a.m.
The cards are labeled 000401, 002004, 001002, 000034.
The same on both
machines.
Then all you probably need for the first Pro350 you got is a drive
in the DEC RDxx series.
I have a DECMATE manual that had system disks but also
a demo disk
which would work with my r'bow. I wonder if it might also work with the
350.
Nope... entirely different instruction architectures...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | email: gentry at zk3.dec.com (work) |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | mbg at world.std.com (home) |
| Hewlett Packard | (s/ at /@/) |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
12:37 p.m.
Yay ! The one with the RX52 fired up using the VR201, displayed the logo
and went thru a date thing, loaded P/OS V. 3.1 and, of course started the log-
in process demanding a user name and password. Anyone know how I can
bypass or disable the name and password ?
I wondered if the Deskmate demo might be some sort of generic disk since
it did work on the Rainbow and the Deskmate is also a different architecture.
Of course the Deskmate System disks were rejected.
Lawrence
The cards are
labeled 000401, 002004, 001002, 000034. The same on both
machines.
Then all you probably need for the first Pro350 you got is a drive
in the DEC RDxx series.
I have a DECMATE manual that had system disks but
also a demo disk
which would work with my r'bow. I wonder if it might also work with the
350.
Nope... entirely different instruction architectures...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
2:42 p.m.
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8051
days inactive
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32 comments
13 participants
participants (13)
-
allain＠panix.com -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
donm＠cts.com -
erd_6502＠yahoo.com -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
jhfinepw4z＠compsys.to -
jingber＠ix.netcom.com -
jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de -
lgwalker＠mts.net -
marvin＠rain.org -
mbg＠TheWorld.com -
tothwolf＠concentric.net -
zaft＠azstarnet.com