On 9/21/2021 12:00 PM, Jonathan Stone wrote:
The RD53s in both Microvax 2000s are dead. I'm reluctant to buy more 30+ year old rotating media. If I'm going to buy a disk emulator, I'd much prefer SCSI to MFM, for the obvious performance reasons.
Been thinking about that: I'm tempted to open one of these RD53's, leave it open for an hour or two, then seal it up and run it till it explodes. The RD53 includes an internal filter between the top of the disk platter (where the internal fan exhausts) and a pipe to the spot where the heads are. That filter has always been quite clean, I'm guessing dust and such from the modern house would just get caught in that with no further issues. I'll put that on my "to do" pile.
My main 11 runs with an MTI ESDI controller and a CDC 383mb half height drive. No issues at all with that generation of disk, it just purrs after sitting for 15 or so years. Same with the Hitachi 150mb drive. ESDI is pretty quick, enough for what I need these days.
C
