Unusual weekend find

From: R. D. Davis <rdd_at_smart.net>
Date: Tue May 30 16:41:33 2000

On Tue, 30 May 2000, Steve Robertson wrote:
> The system is a "Lasor Computer" (note the spelling) is housed in a
> desk-sized cabinent and weighs about 300 LBS. I don't know if it's true but,
[...]
> It has two 8" floppies, 2 10-MB hard drives, and 16 serial ports. All the
> major components are mounted in 19" trays so, supposedly everything could go

Nice find! Wow, that weighs more than my Dynabyte 5100 system!
Are those 8" hard drives?

Out of curiosity, has anyone else had the experience of finding 8"
hard drives to be noisier than 14" hard drives?

> According to the DOCs, the system runs "MLX" which stands for "Multiuser
> Executive". supposedly, it can read CPM formatted disks. I'm not sure if it
> will boot CPM or execute CPM apps though.

Could that be renamed MP/M or a variant of MP/M?

> When I tried to boot the system, it got a failure on the boot drive so, I
> had to do some microsurgery. Seems the heads had stuck to the platters and
> it took a little coaxing to get the platters spinning again. Hopefully, I
> didn't hurt the platters too much.

What's needed is a good, inexpensive, portable "clean room box." A
while back, I saw one of these somewhere, but it wasn't something
marketed to hobbyists and I doubt that it was inexpensive. It was
basically a plexiglas box with filtered air and attached gloves.
Hmmm, I wonder... some pieces of alumimum, plexiglas, glue, rubber
gloves, HEPA filter and strong exhaust fan... cheap mini clean room!
Ok, not perfect, but worth a try for fixing some hard disk problems
when a drive is inoperable?

> I finally did get the system to boot OK but, now I'm getting a "Password"

Ok, not MP/M apparently, or so it appears.

--
R. D. Davis                  
rdd_at_perqlogic.com            
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 
410-744-4900                 
Received on Tue May 30 2000 - 16:41:33 BST

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