[HECnet] Drives for a VAX-11/730

[lee.gleason at comcast.net]

>>   but an RM80 will work fine off of the RB730 controller.

>   Not exactly - I knew that the R80, RA80 and RM80 are all the same drive except for the personality modules.    Certainly the HDAs are all the same.   The >R80 essentially    has no personality        the RB730 does all the work.   I guess the RM80 must have the MASSBUS controller in a separate box?   So the >actual drive is like the 730     it has no personality module inside?


   From what I recall, the RM80 was "personalityless" as well - the massbus guts must have been outside the disk drive. RM80s had the same "SMD-ish" connectors that the real R80 had, and plugged in and worked fine. I remember poring over the drawings for the RB730 at the time, wondering if a plain non-DEC SMD drive would have worked - it looked like it might have, except the RB730 had some capability to control bad blocks that a normal SMD drive wouldn't support. Never got a change to plug in an SMD drive and see what would happen.

>>   My first home machine was an 11/725, to which I added an RB730 controller , 
>>and I used it with an RM80 for a number of years, until power problems killed
>> a bunch of boards in it.

>   Do you still have it?   I have some spare boards (or alternative, I also have a 725 that needs a new chassis :-)

   Nope, had to let it go - it was years ago, and at the time, I didn't have the space to keep it once it was dead (to make space for it in the first place, I had removed the stove from my apartment - I mean, which was more use to me? Needless to say this all predated cheaply available VAXstations).   I kept the good cards, and the VS100. As a "one of these days" project, if I never get another UNIBUS VAX, I'd like to burn some new ROMs for the VS100 controller box - it looks like it would make a middlin' fair 68000 system all on its own.

--
Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR
Control-G Consultants
lee.gleason at gmail.com