Stripping an RA80

[Robert Armstrong]

>Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>R80 the lines are outputs from the drive giving the coding of the ready lamp cap

  I was always thought that the R80 had to be unit #0 to function, but I admit that I've never tried anything else.  I wonder if that's not true??  The RL02 drive(s) on the IDC can be any of units 1, 2 or 3.  

>The HDA is the only major unit I can't repair (yet!).

  Yeah, same here.  In addition to the 11/730 with one (dead) R80, one RA81 and one RA82, I have a MicroVAX-III with an RA82 drive.  Keeping them all working has been a real challenge.  Fixing the electronics and mechanical parts isn't too bad, and I have plenty of spares, but the HDAs don’t seem to be very reliable.  I get the impression that they were designed with a finite number of spin up/spin down cycles in mind, and once you exceed that limit they die.  Fortunately I've been able to find spares for the RA81 and RA82 HDAs, but R?80s seem to be pretty rare.

Bob