What luck! Found an rd54!
Jacob Ritorto
Mt pdp is going to be so pleased! Here's the story:
After reading all the posts about the rd54 being noisy and
reliable, I remembered my Apollo Domain DN-540T, a computer that I've
never had running due to lack of parts. I remembered it making a strange
noise on power-up that reminded me of some of the salvaged droids in that
huge vehicle that picked up r2d2 and c3po after their escape from Darth
Vader. Anyway, I opened up the Apollo and found that it was indeed the
disk making the noise. After pulling off a few boards, I finally found
the disk's nametag. Maxtor XT-2190. I immediately decided to steal the
drive for my pdp which spends most of its time these days wishing it had
more storage space than that provided by its rd52.
I suppose I'll have to check out the "third-party-disks.txt"
document to find out the jumper settings and such, but as of now, I assume
I need an rqdx3 and the formatting program. I have an rx50 drive and
rqdx1 controller now. I want to put the rd54 in my 11/73 (ba23). I have
extra skids.
Does somebody out there have a spare rqdx3 for sale? Other
advice? Formatting program?
Please and Thank You.
jake
Stuart Brook
Jacob Ritorto wrote:
> the disk's nametag. Maxtor XT-2190. I immediately decided to steal the
> drive for my pdp which spends most of its time these days wishing it had
> more storage space than that provided by its rd52.
Well ... you'll have to do a lot more than you plan ... the Drive itself
for an RD54 is indeed a Maxtor ... but the drive electronics interface
are digital proprietary and extrememly unlikely to be what is under that
Maxtor drive!
So ... even armed with an RQDX3, you are virtually guaranteed to be out
of luck!
Stuart
Stuart Brook
Seems I've got to eat my words ... People seem to have proven me wrong
... I (courtesy of my previous employer, a well known computer
manufacturer which has chopped its workforce by over half) was under the
impression that the RD series drive electronics were not standard MFM
... but tailored for MSCP.
Learn something new every day.
Thanks folks.
Stuart
Auke van Slooten
In article <327962...@concentric.net>,
these were an rd53, and an rd32 (i think, the small seagate harddisk anyway).
But someone else seems to have got it working:
================================================================================
Note 93.6 Low-end disk devices - The Digital difference 6 of 136
EISNER::KENNEDY "Terry Kennedy" 12 lines 1-APR-1988 01:22
-< RD54 >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The DEC RD54 is a Maxtor XT-2190. I have installed one of
these with no modifications in a Micro-11 system (with a
RQDX3 as the controller, of course).
I purchased the drive from Storage Dimensions in Califor-
nia, (408) 395-2688. The cost was under $1700 and it
arrived in two days. They offer a one year warranty on the
drive, too. They call it a 'Model AT133'.
Of course, you need an RQDX3 or the integrated thingie in
a MicroVAX 2000 to run this drive...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~
Auke van Slooten
Don Stokes
In article <327962...@concentric.net>,
Stuart Brook <sbr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>Well ... you'll have to do a lot more than you plan ... the Drive itself
>for an RD54 is indeed a Maxtor ... but the drive electronics interface
>are digital proprietary and extrememly unlikely to be what is under that
>Maxtor drive!
This is complete and utter rot.
The "DEC" drive is the Maxtor XT2190D; the D simply specifies that the
drive spins up a little slower for noise and power reasons. I believe
the difference between an XT2190D and a stock XT2190 is one resistor. In
any case, an unmodified XT2190 works just fine. In fact I've recently
pulled an "RD54" out of a DEC-maintained MicroVAX 2000 which turned out
to be a standard XT2190.
All the RDxx drives are bog-standard MFM drives, all of them are/were
available direct from the original manufacturer and would work on an
RQDXn controller without modification, assuming the ROMs on the RQDX[12]
are up to rev. In addition, the RQDX3 can be persuaded to use other
models, although details on how to do this are always a bit sketchy. (It
involves what to tell the formatter about the MSCP parameters for the
drive; it's a software/firmware thing with the smarts on the controller
for bad block revectoring etc, nothing to do with the interface.)
All RDxx drives work just fine on non-DEC MFM controllers.
I have no idea where you got the idea that an XT2190 couldn't be used as
an RD54. It obviously wasn't from this newsgroup.
--
Don Stokes, Network Manager, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
d...@vuw.ac.nz(work) d...@zl2tnm.gen.nz(home) +64 4 495-5052 Fax+64 4 471-5386
Jacob Ritorto
Thank you all for the reassurance/guidance in this XT-2190
business. I checked out 'third-party-disks.txt' at sunsite to find out
about the jumper settings, but that doc didn't quite agree with the
markings on my drive's circuitry. My jumpers posts are marked thus:
near the data cable connectors:
a "J7" group of six posts marked 1..6
jumper currently installed on posts 5 & 6.
close to that, a row of five posts marked "J8" and "JC"
jumper currently installed on posts nearest the middle of board.
towards the middle of the board, two pair of posts (4 total) adjacent,
marked "JA" and "JO" (maybe "JD" or "J0", hard to read).
jumpers in both sets.
and finally towards the front of the board, a pair of posts labelled "JB".
jumper removed.
the label on the HDA reads:
Model XT-2190
Series Code 2
Capacity 190 MB
TLA 1092128 1
HDA 1011549
PCBA 1059055 K
Serial No. 88642
Is everything still ok here? The doc at sunsite mentions a group of
jumper posts labelled "4 c 3 2 c 1" or something. Nothing like that on
my board. Maybe this group is the same as my "J7"?
I hope to set this drive to be DU0:, but I guess the rqdx3 has
something to do with that as well. I have the BA23 cabinet. Don't know
if it expects all drives to be at hard device #3 like the ba123 or what.
I still haven't found an rqdx3. I know that I need one with roms
at rev 339 and 340 or better. Pointers to where to buy one (in usa) would
be much appreciated. I assume these things are becoming quite cheap by
now. (Radical Optomism? 8-) ) I'm open to non-DEC options, too, if anyone
has those.
-jake
Tim Shoppa
In article <327ADE...@concentric.net>,
Stuart Brook <sbr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>Seems I've got to eat my words ... People seem to have proven me wrong
>... I (courtesy of my previous employer, a well known computer
>manufacturer which has chopped its workforce by over half) was under the
>impression that the RD series drive electronics were not standard MFM
>... but tailored for MSCP.
It's not exactly "tailored for MSCP", but isn't there some rather non-standard
jumper installed onto a Micropolis 1323/1335 in order to make it work
as a RD53 with RQDX controllers? At one point in time, I knew exactly
what this jumper did, but I've forgotten now. I have a vague
recollection it has to do with some limit on the number of heads
or (more likely) number of cylinders in a MFM interface.
Can anybody fill me in here?
Tim. (sho...@triumf.ca)
Javier Henderson
Stuart Brook <sbr...@concentric.net> wrote (<327962...@concentric.net>):
>Jacob Ritorto wrote:
>> the disk's nametag. Maxtor XT-2190. I immediately decided to steal the
>> drive for my pdp which spends most of its time these days wishing it had
>> more storage space than that provided by its rd52.
>Well ... you'll have to do a lot more than you plan ... the Drive itself
>for an RD54 is indeed a Maxtor ... but the drive electronics interface
>are digital proprietary and extrememly unlikely to be what is under that
>Maxtor drive!
>So ... even armed with an RQDX3, you are virtually guaranteed to be out
>of luck!
No, negative, negatory.
I've used plenty of XT2190's as RD54's, and never had any problems. There
was a special version of the XT2190 that took longer to spin up for the
VAXStation/MicroVAX 2000 (less power demands during spinup).
DEC's RD54's may have had some minor differences with stock XT2190's, but
they seemed to not matter as far as RQDX3's and VMS went.
-javier
Terry Kennedy
Tim Shoppa <sho...@alph02.triumf.ca> writes:
> It's not exactly "tailored for MSCP", but isn't there some rather non-standard
> jumper installed onto a Micropolis 1323/1335 in order to make it work
> as a RD53 with RQDX controllers? At one point in time, I knew exactly
> what this jumper did, but I've forgotten now. I have a vague
> recollection it has to do with some limit on the number of heads
> or (more likely) number of cylinders in a MFM interface.
> Can anybody fill me in here?
Yup. The earlier RQDX controllers (RQDX1 and 2, M8639-YA and -YB as I recall)
probed the drive for its geometry each time an MSCP "online" command was done.
This required a table of drive models in the firmware, so new drives meant new
firmware, which was particularly annoying when there were *three* different
drives called the RD52 and Field Service would have to swap controllers (or at
least controller EPROMs) when swapping the drive.
The firmware figured out the drive geometry by doing various invalid seeks
and head selects. However, the RD53 has 8 heads and 1024 cylinders, which means
there are *no* invalid operations (these being the original MFM limits). The
jumper causes the drive to error on some particular operation (seek to cylinder
number -1, I think, though I don't really remember any more) and the RQDX2
firmware was changed to try this operation in order to identify the RD53.
The RQDX3 controller was a newer design which supported the extended MFM spec
for > 8 heads and > 1024 cylinders. It also obtained the geometry from the user
during the format pass and wrote it to disk, so it didn't have to identify the
disk each time an online command was done (which sped up certain operating
systems). Since the RQDX3 used a different interleave a reformat was necessary
when moving a disk from an RQDX1/2 to a RQDX3 and the MSCP layout on the disks
allowed for spare blocks, so the capacity remained unchanged even though the
controller reserved some drive space for this info. Since the user provided
the geometry (usually by specifying the DEC model number), the RQDX3 could also
support additional drive models. DEC never released the info on how to compute
the MSCP parameters and the ability to input the geometry was removed from the
ZRQC PDP-11 formatter program when it was rewritten. You can still specify the
geometry if you have an MV/VS2000, though.
Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
te...@spcvxa.spc.edu St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
+1 201 915 9381 (voice) +1 201 435-3662 (FAX)
Graham Godfrey
>Seems I've got to eat my words ... People seem to have proven me wrong
>... I (courtesy of my previous employer, a well known computer
>manufacturer which has chopped its workforce by over half) was under the
>impression that the RD series drive electronics were not standard MFM
>... but tailored for MSCP.
>
>
>Thanks folks.
>
>Stuart
I had a RD54 (XT2190) working on my PC for about 2 years without any
problems therefore I consider that standard.
--
Graham Godfrey
I said it NOT my company etc, etc, etc....
Graham Godfrey
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.961102...@sparcy.geneva.edu>,
Jacob Ritorto <jrit...@sparcy.geneva.edu> writes
> Thank you all for the reassurance/guidance in this XT-2190
>business. I checked out 'third-party-disks.txt' at sunsite to find out
>about the jumper settings, but that doc didn't quite agree with the
>markings on my drive's circuitry. My jumpers posts are marked thus:
>
>near the data cable connectors:
>
>a "J7" group of six posts marked 1..6
> jumper currently installed on posts 5 & 6.
>
>Is everything still ok here? The doc at sunsite mentions a group of
>jumper posts labelled "4 c 3 2 c 1" or something. Nothing like that on
>my board. Maybe this group is the same as my "J7"?
Some drives came with pins marked 1 through 6. Here is the jumper block
comparison.
DRIVE SELECT 0 1,C 5,6
DRIVE SELECT 1 2,C 4,5
DRIVE SELECT 2 3,C 2,3
DRIVE SELECT 3 4,C 1,2
>
> I hope to set this drive to be DU0:, but I guess the rqdx3 has
>something to do with that as well. I have the BA23 cabinet. Don't know
>if it expects all drives to be at hard device #3 like the ba123 or what.
In a BA23 the fist drive has to be drive select #3, and the second drive
should be #4, the RX50 will be #0 & #1.
> I still haven't found an rqdx3. I know that I need one with roms
>at rev 339 and 340 or better. Pointers to where to buy one (in usa) would
>be much appreciated. I assume these things are becoming quite cheap by
>now. (Radical Optomism? 8-) ) I'm open to non-DEC options, too, if anyone
>has those.
The minimum Hardware rev should be rev F3, firmware V4.0 (339E5-00 &
340E5-00)