[HECnet] Drives for a VAX-11/730

[Dave McGuire]

On 07/15/2013 10:21 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote:
    I have several vintage SMD drives, including a couple of nice CDC
9715 drives, that I was thinking about using to replace the RA8x
drives.   I have not one but two UNIBUS SMD controllers     an Emulex SC21
and a Spectra Logic 121     that I thought would do the job, but after
reading the fine print yesterday that turns out not to be true.   Both
controllers emulate RH11s with RM0x drives attached, which is fine if
you   re a PDP-11 but VMS has never supported that configuration.
...
    I   ve got some RA7x drives, but there   s no easy way to mount them or
supply power to them.   I   m not sure if there ever was a rack mount
chassis for RA7x drives.   There was for RA9x drives, but those I don   t
have.

  There are rackmount chassis for RA7x drives.   They hold four drives, two in the front and two in the back, and each take up half a rack width...meaning a pair of these chassis, holding up to eight RA7x drives, is about the same size as an RL02/R80/RA81/etc.

  I have a bunch of these.   I'm hanging onto them (I have a LOT of machines here) but they're not tough to find.   Let me know if you'd like me to take some pictures of them so you can more easily identify them when they pop up.

  That said, though, I have a shortage of SMD drives here, and you said you have a bunch of those; I MIGHT be interested in some sort of a swap at some point.

    Does anybody have any other ideas?   Who else has an old UNIBUS VAX?
What are you doing to disk drives?

  I have an R80 on my 11/730 and an RA81 (though now dead) on my 11/750.

                      -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA