15 Jul
2013
15 Jul
'13
7:31 p.m.
> 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