PDP-11/23 machine boots fine

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Sat Mar 25 09:35:18 2000

>Technoid_at_cheta.net wrote:

> I nearly said nothing but last night I was working late on this machine
> and DID in fact diagnose and reassemble the machine in working order.
> When I put the skins back on it I must have accidentally toggled the Fixed
> Disk Ready button on the faceplate. That is all the failure was and when
> I noticed it after work this evening I could have kicked myself.

Jerome Fine replies:

It is probably not the first and will not be the last time. I am always just
very thankful it was something that simple.

> Anyway, the machine works. I would like to format some floppies and get a
> restorable backup of the drive. The two floppies respond to DIR/Bad, and
> Init/Bad as devices DU1 and DU2:. But I get 'bad sector in system area'
> when I try to init. How do I low-level floppies?

I sounds like an RX50 drive for the system you are using. By the time I
send this, someone else will also have replied that using PUTR on a PC
with a 5 1/4" HD PC floppy can be used to do a low level format on the
RX50 media. DO NOT use 5 1/4" HD PC media since the magnetic
strength of the media is too high - you may only use the normal DSDD
5 1/4" 360 KByte floppies. While you do end up using 80 tracks, the
number of sectors per track is only 10 which is why the DSDD media
must be used for an RX50 drive in a DEC system.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Sat Mar 25 2000 - 09:35:18 GMT