About to acquire an IBM 5360... - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

20 Aug 1999

On Friday, August 20, 1999 7:23 AM, Philip.Belben(a)pgen.com
[SMTP:Philip.Belben@pgen.com] wrote:
...

   Finally,
as I can seldom resist saying, the 5340 and 5360 have the
 nicest floppy drive I've ever met.  Twenty-three disks all in it at
 once... 
 So I have this carthridge I liberated from an abandoned 5360 that holds
 about 10 8" floppies.  Does this get loaded into this 23-disk floppy
 drive? 
 Easy.  You put the whole cartridge in.  The drive takes two cartridges  and three
...
  loose disks.  I seem to recall that the OS accepted
designations for  either
...
  cartridge, both cartridges, any single disk, or all
three single disks,  and
...
  there may have been a way of specifying a single disk
within a cartridge  (I can
...
  look this up at home).

I don't remember the designations but, the larger (washing machine size)
machines had the multidisk floppy drives. According to the documentation,
you can specify a particular floppy in the carosel. Although, I don't
recall the exact syntax.
My system is the size of a 2-drawer file cabinet and weighs about 150 lbs
(70KG for the rest of the world). Unfortunately, it does not have casters
making it a PITA to move. It has a single 8" floppy that holds around 1MB
of data. The drive seems pretty fast in relation to the rest of the
machine. There are four twinax and four DB25 connectors on the rear. I have
the console and printer hooked up to the first twinax connector and it
works just fine.
I got a modem and cables with the system but, haven't hooked it up. The
cable has a DB25 connector so, it obviously plugs into one of the other
ports. Don't know for sure but, I'm assuming they are normal RS232
connections?
IMHO, this is one ugly OS!
Later,
Steve Robertson - &lt;steverob(a)hotoffice.com&gt;