Looking for a pair of DEC RL02 drives, working or otherwise

Chris Zach cz at alembic.crystel.com
Sun May 10 20:12:14 CDT 2020


> If you have the version of the RL02 that can be jumpered for either
> RL01 or RL02 use, yes.  I've seen people put switches on a plate under
> the lid (over the old brush area) so that you dismount an RL02K, flip
> the switches, mount an RL01K, then read it.  One of the tricks is to
> be sure to write-protect the RL01 pack in a modified RL02.

That is a good idea. A DPDT switch could flip to RL01 and engage the 
write protect switch since I forget to do that. A lot.

> Yep.  I got an RL01 in 1985 to use with an RL8A and my PDP-8/a, then
> it came in handy in 1987 when I got a gig where I needed my own PDP-11
> to code at home and the RL01 was perfect for the boot volume (I
> borrowed an RL02 from my boss for the customer data volume).  Plenty
> of room for the OS and my code.

Same here. I ran a pdp11/03 at home in college and upgraded from RX01's 
to an RL01. The speed was amazing and when I got a second one and an 
11/23+ cpu I could run RSX11M and Decnet to connect to the school's 
network.

Still they are a bit tempremental: My current pair of drives give a 
different count of errors even though I have tuned the amps to proper 
values on both of them. Bringing the value up more makes the errors go 
down, maybe I should just crank em up.

But that will probably screw up writes. Hm.


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