Someone in northern Maryland near the PA state border is looking for the following: He has a DEC PDP-11/73 with a non-functional RD53 hard drive, and several RSX-11M installation and backup tapes on TK50 tape cartridges. He would like to migrate the RD53 image to modern media so that he can (initially) utilize it via simh, and (eventually) use it in his 11/73 via a hardware drive simulator. Failing recovery of the RD53 data, He'd like to migrate the data from one of the TK50 tapes to modern media. Anyone ready, willing and able to do this? ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey@vcfed.org
The most common problem with the RD53 drives is the rubber bumper stop that the heads rest against. It glues the head stack to the side and it can never load. Symptom will be that the drive spins up and you never hear the clunk of the heads loading, etc. This can be fixed by carefully opening the HDA in as clean of an environment as you can get, and manually freeing the heads, and removing/replacing/covering that gooey rubber bumper and cleaning things enough so the heads don't get stuck again. I've been able to recover several drives that way. Which reminds me I have another one sitting here I need to do recovery on as it is... From there you can use David Gesswein's wonderful MFM emulator to image the disk. TK50's are notoriously unreliable, some of them are starting to shed, and many of the drives are broken or incredibly flakey. That said, it's possible to recover them, I have a SCSI TK50 drive that I've used for both recovery and for creating bootable tapes, although I haven't used it in years. Been a while since I had to try to use TK50 tapes. -Ian On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 8:49 AM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Someone in northern Maryland near the PA state border is looking for the following:
He has a DEC PDP-11/73 with a non-functional RD53 hard drive, and several RSX-11M installation and backup tapes on TK50 tape cartridges.
He would like to migrate the RD53 image to modern media so that he can (initially) utilize it via simh, and (eventually) use it in his 11/73 via a hardware drive simulator.
Failing recovery of the RD53 data, He'd like to migrate the data from one of the TK50 tapes to modern media.
Anyone ready, willing and able to do this? ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey@vcfed.org
On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 10:32:11AM -0500, Ian Primus via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
The most common problem with the RD53 drives is the rubber bumper stop that the heads rest against.
Yup. http://www.pdp8online.com/rd53/rd53.shtml
Which reminds me I have another one sitting here I need to do recovery on as it is... From there you can use David Gesswein's wonderful MFM emulator to image the disk.
Biggest problem is RQDX3 does translation of the drive sector mapping to hide bad sectors and the data tables it uses. Not sure about the earlier controllers. My emulator can recover whats really on the disk but additional software needs to be written to unravel to sector mapping to get an image usable by SIMH. I haven't had the time/incentive. Need to find out what controller the drive was used with.
TK50's are notoriously unreliable, some of them are starting to shed, and many of the drives are broken or incredibly flakey. That said, it's possible to recover them, I have a SCSI TK50 drive that I've used for both recovery and for creating bootable tapes, although I haven't used it in years. Been a while since I had to try to use TK50 tapes.
I have a bunch of tapes on the to read stack. I think I got the drive working but was running into the tape sticking problem. On the todo is buying/making a tape baker to try to archive the tapes. I also got a SCSI version of the drive which should make it easier to create an image. Freeing the heads and reading the drive wouldn't take too long assuming drive behaves. Making a usable SIMH image would take time. Someone with a easy way of making a disk image with the appropriate DEC hardware would likely be easier. Reading the tapes would also take a larger chunk of time.
On Jan 25, 2022, at 1:11 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I have a bunch of tapes on the to read stack. I think I got the drive working but was running into the tape sticking problem. On the todo is buying/making a tape baker to try to archive the tapes. I also got a SCSI version of the drive which should make it easier to create an image.
FWIW on the tape baker, Chuck Guzis always used to recommend a 25W bulb in a cardboard box for a few days. Should be easy enough if you have any old 25W bulbs still kicking around. - Dave
On 1/25/22 13:30, David Riley via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Jan 25, 2022, at 1:11 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
FWIW on the tape baker, Chuck Guzis always used to recommend a 25W bulb in a cardboard box for a few days. Should be easy enough if you have any old 25W bulbs still kicking around.
I do have to remind folks, we have vintage computers that tend to generate a lot of waste heat. We may not need the light bulb. ;-) -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Incandescent Lightbulbs are a good tool for technicians servicing equipment that Have power issues. Mike R. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.
On Jan 26, 2022, at 9:13 AM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 1/25/22 13:30, David Riley via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Jan 25, 2022, at 1:11 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
FWIW on the tape baker, Chuck Guzis always used to recommend a 25W bulb in a cardboard box for a few days. Should be easy enough if you have any old 25W bulbs still kicking around.
I do have to remind folks, we have vintage computers that tend to generate a lot of waste heat. We may not need the light bulb. ;-)
-- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 1/25/22 1:11 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I have a bunch of tapes on the to read stack. I think I got the drive working but was running into the tape sticking problem. On the todo is buying/making a tape baker to try to archive the tapes. I also got a SCSI version of the drive which should make it easier to create an image.
If they're TK50s, I wouldn't bother using an actual TK50 drive to read them. They didn't work worth a damn even when they were new. I still don't understand how they brought that product to market in that sort of shape. Best to get a Tx85, Tx86, or Tx87, with the second letter for the appropriate interface. ('Z' is SCSI) These can all read (but not write) TK50 tapes. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 1/25/22 8:49 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Someone in northern Maryland near the PA state border is looking for the following:
He has a DEC PDP-11/73 with a non-functional RD53 hard drive, and several RSX-11M installation and backup tapes on TK50 tape cartridges.
He would like to migrate the RD53 image to modern media so that he can (initially) utilize it via simh, and (eventually) use it in his 11/73 via a hardware drive simulator.
Failing recovery of the RD53 data, He'd like to migrate the data from one of the TK50 tapes to modern media.
Anyone ready, willing and able to do this?
We at LSSM can help with this, if the gent wants to make the trek across PA. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
participants (7)
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Dave McGuire -
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Jeffrey Brace -
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