[Info-vax] Assistance needed!! working RM05 drive and VAX needed for proje

[Dave McGuire]

On 9/28/23 17:34, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>> That might be the best way to read old RM05 packs, too.
>>>
>>> Noone really have the hardware to do this with an RM05 pack.
>>
>>    Once again, we do have a CDC 9766 at LSSM.  Someone just needs to 
>> take it on as a project.  The problem is manpower, not capability or 
>> inventory.
> 
> Well, the comment was about someone having something equivalent to the 
> KryoFlux solution for floppies, but addressing the RM05 disk pack.
> 
> Do you have the equivalent of a KryoFlox to read that pack? Another disk 
> drive isn't exactly the same thing, unless you are suggesting to rip out 
> the electronics, and put in something else/new that will give you the 
> raw magnetic fluctuations.

   I don't know why you're being so argumentative today.  I hope 
everything is ok.

   LSSM is not going to be doing any flux-transition imaging on a 9766. 
If that's what the OP wants, he's not going to have an easy time finding 
it.  We could certainly do it with a lot of time and money, but there 
aren't a lot of 9766 packs out there anymore, so it really wouldn't be 
worth the investment in time and effort.

   But what we DO have, once again, is a CDC 9766 drive, and controllers 
for it for a couple of different buses that will read and write 9766 
packs in the format used by the DEC RM05.  It's much easier to get a 
drive running on a computer and do a "dd" like a sane person.  If the 
goal is to recover the data from intact well-stored disk packs, that's 
the best way to do it.

   We're not new at this; we do quite a lot of media imaging at LSSM. 
We would not approach it any other way.

              -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, President/Curator
Large Scale Systems Museum
New Kensington, PA