[vcf-midatlantic] VAX/RD54 recovery

[David Gesswein]

Drop them off when you get a chance with a note on them. I'll be at the
upcoming work day but likely won't make another till late in the year.

On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 12:52:23PM -0400, Connor Krukosky via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> David,
> Those drives are safe at my house, the museum seemed to have no interest in
> them since if they planned to get any machines going they planned to run
> some of your boards and not original drives even if they did work.
> Glad to see you were able to get the head amp board hooked up to one of
> these. We should be-able to recover what was on the original drives.
> 
> I have not attempted anything with them myself but I have one of your boards
> I plan to build up with a future digikey order.
> I have been working on some new boards I designed I need to get up and going
> not related to vintage computing.
> The next time I am at the museum I can drop them off somewhere so you can
> look at them if you'd like.
> 
> I believe I was not able to get MOP booting working on the Vax... I believe
> it was an issue with it being a Microvax II. I really ought to drag my
> Microvax II up and see if I can attempt to get it net booting. I have only
> gotten later Vaxen going with my MOP boot setup. Specifically a 3900 and
> some 3100s.
> 
> -Connor K
> 
> On 7/26/2020 10:47, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> >     I had gotten a RD54 and worked out how to pull the head servo for data
> > recovery.
> > http://www.pdp8online.com/mfm/head_servo/pics/rd54_wires.shtml?small
> > 
> > At a previous workday a VAX was being worked on for the Museum. The drive in
> > it had head position errors so I wasn't able to get a good read at the time.
> > With the above method I probably can read it now. If the drive is still around
> > and not reformatted I can try at the next work day. I think their was another
> > drive that wasn't read from a PDP-11 also.
> > 
> > Did the VAX get a new OS install on it?