PDP-11/45 RSTS/E boot problem

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 18, 2019, at 4:47 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2/18/2019 3:38 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>> 
>> ...
>> Then again, I remember our college RS64 (drive for the RC11) which developed a bad motor bearing.  ...
>> 
> 
> Nice of the FE to do that.
> 
> The Univ. of Wisconsin CS Department had one of those, but the platter
> went bad.  They just flipped the platter upside down and got more use
> out of it.

Yes, that was a feature.  You had to reformat it, which required getting the timing track writer box from Maynard.  I have seen that done on an RS11 (RF11) drive on our RSTS system; it crashed some heads and was rebuilt completely (new heads, new platter, new motor).

> The Univ. of Wisconsin ECE Department also had one - the two machines
> were nearly twins.  I *have* *that* one - and it still ran when I tried
> it a year or so ago.

Neat.  You can run RT11 on it if you add the boot loader and driver, at least old versions.  DOS V4 also supports it.  And older versions of RSTS can use it as a swap disk.

	paul