On 6/12/06 01:45, "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
> At 8:08 PM
+0000 12/5/06, Adrian Graham wrote:
>>
We have some RD53s to test for a customer.....
>
> You have my sympathy.
Indeed, it looks like the original boot drive (also an
RD53) long gave up
the ghost, which is a shame because it had RT11 5.4 and one of the
systems I wrote in the 1980's......
A microVAX II that I acquired earlier this year included a RD53/Micropolis drive. After
reading various posts about these drives I had very low expectations for reviving it and
hopefully discovering something interesting on it.
And to make matters more dire, during the pickup, when hefting the BA123 box to load it
into the truck, the drive+sled slipped out and fell to the concrete floor, probably about
14".
So, with absolutely no positive expectations, after getting things ready for a quick drive
dump by netbooting NetBSD and setting up a remote mount, I fired up the drives. Lo and
behold, it worked! It spun up nicely, I heard the heads seek to 0 and all was good.
Turned out that the drive only had a minimal Ultrix root filesystem, but I'm quite
pleased that the drive still seems to work. I've fired it up many times since in the
past 6 months with no problems.
Here's a suggestion. Knock that drive hard! ;) If the problem is that the heads are
'stuck', it just might kick them off the stop. If the drive is considered dead,
might be worth a try!
J