Stripping an RA80

[Tony Duell]

I am probably going to be flamed for this....

My VAX11/730 has an R80 disk drive as you might expect. I dismantled this many
years ago to move it and never reassembled it. Over the years (in
particular during
a house move), the smaller parts (screws, the brackets and clevis pins for the
gas struts, and ribbon cables) have got lost.

A friend of mine (Philip) was having a clearout and gave me an RA80
(SDI interface,
of course). I don't run SDI drives anywhere (I think I have a UDA50 somewhere),
but a lot of parts are the same as in the R80.

My first thought is to strip this RA80 (that's why I got it!). This
will provide me
with most of the missing parts (all that I would have to make is the
26 way ribbon
to the controller cable -- the 60 way one is still in the R80 chassis). So after
stripping I think I would be left with 4 classes of part :

1) Those I need for the R80 -- brackets, screws cables, etc

2) Those that could be useful spares for the R80 :
HDA
Spindle Motor
Belt
Belt Tensioner
PSU
R/W PCB
Servo PCB
Microprocessor PCB (the ROMs are different, of course, but the the
PCB is the same and could be a source of components. I don't swap boards
anyway)
AC and DC power harnesses
Fans
Motor capacitor

3) Those that are of no use in the R80, but are not too hard to store
Personality board
Control panel
SDI cabling

4) Those that I don't need and which are a pain to store
Cbassis parts.

Is there any reason to keep the bare, stripped, chassis, or should I let it go
as scrap metal?

Does anyone run an RA80 and think any of the bits in list 3 (certainly) or 2
(I may want to keep these, in particular the HDA if it's good) are useful to
them? Of course I don't know if the parts are still good.

Or should I preserve the RA80 as it is, and just use it as patterns for the
missing bits. Try to find a source of the UNC screws, make up the cables,
make up brackets, etc. I would only do that if there is a very good reason.

-tony