MicroVAX equipment

From: Clint Wolff <vaxman_at_qwest.net>
Date: Fri Jul 20 00:57:45 2001

Wear gloves. Your hands will flake off dead skin pretty much all the
time, and just one flake is all that is required to ruin your hard
work...

Also, if you can get clean room wipes, buy a bag, and wipe down everything
inside the box with them. If you make a little airlock you can pass
stuff back out, otherwise put them inside a plastic bag to keep the
contaminates from circulating...

clint

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Chuck McManis wrote:

> At 12:33 AM 7/20/01 +0100, Tony wrote:
> >A winchester has am HDA (Head Disk Assembly) which can only be taken
> >apart and repaired in a cleanroom. I don't have a cleanroom at home, so I
> >can't repair HDAs.
>
> Actually you can make a clean room fairly easily with a 10 gallon aquarium
> tank and a blower.
>
> First, find a tank that has polycarbonate (aka Lexan) sides (generally they
> are the cheap ones here.) Remove one side, cut two 6" diameter holes in the
> side. Now glue a pair of latex tubes (6" O.D.) on to the sides by
> overlapping about an inch, stretch the latex, and epoxy to the sides. Now
> tighten the end of the tubes by overlapping the edges to make their
> diameter approximately 1/4" less than that of your wrists.
>
> Build a new top for the tank using another piece of Polycarbonate (note you
> can do everything from the top but it gets crowded. Install a squirrel cage
> blower and a HEPA 0.1 micron filter. The filter is going to slow your
> airflow considerably so you want your blower to give you a net positive
> pressure _after_ it blows through the filter. Now create another hole in
> the top and cover it with three or four heater type filters. If you get the
> kind they sell for folks allergic to pollen they should be great. This is
> your "exit" smoke stack. It isn't filtering so much as trapping the
> particles that you are purging from the work space.
>
> Now put your disk and tools in the tank, put on the top, run the blower to
> "purge" the air (leave your hands out of the tubes for a minute or so),
> wash your hands really well, stick them through the tubes until your hands
> pop out the end and the tube is sealed on your wrist. Wait a bit more to
> purge any particulates you've introduced. Now fix the drive :-)
>
> I've seen heads replaced this way (in a hand isolation tank) but typically
> unless you have a head assembly handy you won't be able to do much in there.
>
> I can't remember where I saw the plans to build something like this but I
> believe it was the Amateur Scientist column. They also had you put on latex
> gloves but since you aren't worried about getting infected or anything from
> the drive I don't think you would need them.
>
> The trick here is that you don't need a clean "room" you only need a clean
> "workbench" area to work.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
>
>
Received on Fri Jul 20 2001 - 00:57:45 BST