DEC Pro380 disk drives - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 May 2007

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Subject: Re: DEC Pro380 disk drives
   From: Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com>
   Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 10:37:58 +0100
     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>

On 07/05/2007 03:06, Charles H. Dickman wrote:
  Can the Pro380 be used with RX33 drives in place
of the RX50? The Pro 
 technical manual doesn't say anything about the RX33. It also doesn't 
 say that there is a way to change the floppy data rate, so I am guessing 
 it does not support them. 
I don't think so, but others may know more. 
RX33 can be used in a pro380, however it's used as a RX50 with same data rate
and single sided.  The upside is a pair of RX33s will fit and are far more 
reliable and quieter.

...
   Can the Pro380
be used with any ST506/ST412 type hard disks or just 
 RD50, RD51, and RD52? I have a couple RD32 and some non-DEC drives and 
 am curious if any of the could be used with it. How do you format a 
 drive for a Pro? I never noticed any support for Professionals in XXDP? 
  Was there a utility in P/OS for that purpose? 
I guess you need to format it the way you would for an RQDX1, with XXDP. 
  I do know that it shares some low-level code with the early RQDXs, and 
uses similar sniffers to determine the drive type, so you can't just use 
any drive -- it has to look like one of the ones a Pro supports. 
Other drives work once formatted.

Allison