AED WINC08

[Jerry Weiss]

On 11/11/19 12:27 AM, Eric Moore via cctech wrote:
> Hello, I have a working AED WINC08 drive, which is a winchester drive
> emulated to look like an RL02, along with the qbus controller card.
>
> https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_aedbrochurJan82_2107642/page/n1
>
> The winchester drive itself is a fujitsu M2302B. One of the disks (it shows
> up as 2 10MB volumes in RT-11) is having write issues. How can I find a
> replacement disk drive in working order? The 2302b has a shugart compatible
> interface, so should any shugart compatible 8" winchester drive work in the
> aed winc08 rl02 emulator?
>
> What other options do I have to attach a winchester drive to an 11/03 for
> use in rt-11? I have an RL02 I have never hooked up, do the disk packs hold
> up well over time? How hard is it to clean and align an 8" winchester drive
> to try and address the write issue?
>
> Thank you,
>
> -Eric

In my (pre) historic use of products similar to this one, it was rare to swap the vendors drive with a completely different drive. The controllers, their electrical interfaces and recording formats were tightly coupled to the disk drives implemented.

My suggestion would be to look for a QBus SCSI Controller like the Emulex UC07 or  Dilog SQ739, though both are a bit pricey.   These open up a large number of drives to use and later versions of RT11 support the MSCP protocol the controllers emulate.  The use of the SCSI2SD drive emulator gives even more flexibility through the use of microSD cards.  Google around for both.

I have an pair of RL02 drives.  I keep them clean and power them up for short periods regularly.  You need to be alert to potential issues with electrolytic capacitors drying out and causing problems in the power supplies and circuit boards of all devices of from this era.  See http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?72247-Dismantle-an-RL02-pack for a recent discussion  and pictures of some of the material in the packs decaying over time.

     Jerry