RA81

From: Ethan Dicks <erd_at_infinet.com>
Date: Wed Aug 26 17:42:31 1998

>
> Bleh,
>
> Well, I did something silly. I bid $26 on an RA81 (DEC) harddrive at
> WeirdStuff Warehouse, and I won it.

Very silly.

> This means, unfortunately, that I'm going to have to move the damn thing.

I hope you live in town.

> As I understand it, RA81's weigh 148 pounds. I need some seriously
> good tips about how to move the thing without a) killing myself and b)
> destroying the drive :)

There are two interlocks to check - the white head lock lever on the HDA,
near the front, and the motor disengage cable. The cable is tricky, because,
IIRC, there are two different release mechanisms - a lever and a cable with
a pull handle that has an embedded brass bead that hangs up on a metal clip.

In either case, you don't want the belt under tension when you move the drive,
lest you wiggle the platters back and forth past the heads.

> (Normally, when I buy really heavy things they *roll*. This thing
> doesn't roll :)

Use a steeper hill. It'll roll. ;-)

I have a couple of these things. Fortunately, I just got a pair of RA70's
that will prevent me from having to use an RA81 on a uVAXII. I can't bear
to throw away the RA81's, because they do work. Ah well... that problem will
take care of itself after enough power-on hours have elapsed.

ObFolklore: working customer support, I got a complaint that the RA81's at
a university were dying at a rate of 1 per month. Our customer complained
to DEC about the reliability but were told "those drives have a 50,000 MTBF".
They had enough drives that DEC predicted a failure every few weeks. Needless
to say, the university upgraded to a different drive as soon as possible.
Received on Wed Aug 26 1998 - 17:42:31 BST