RA-81 reliability (was Re: ebay bid on dec rack)

From: Ethan Dicks <erd_6502_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed Mar 26 08:57:01 2003

--- Jeffrey Sharp <jss_at_subatomix.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, Jay West wrote:
> > FYI - I'm likely going to be bidding on the DEC "3 high" rack on Ebay
> that
> > includes an RA81. The RA81 is missing the HDA, and I have no need for
> it,
> > I just want the rack as it's the right height to mate to my 11/44X. If
> > anyone wants the RA81-HDA, let me know before it gets skipped.
>
> :-) Of my 12 RA81s, 10 or so have Post-it notes saying "Bad HDA". I'm
> starting to see a pattern here...

No more than 50% of my RA81s are functional.

We had a customer that complained to DEC that every month they had
a head crash on an RA-81. DEC responded with some statistic about
MTBF. They went back and forth a few times until someone divided
the number of spindles they had into the MTBF number and converted
it to days - it was approximately 30. :-)

The customer elected to go with a smaller number of higher capacity
drives and the problem went away (mostly because the MTBF of later
models was *much* higher per spindle).

There was a notorious problem with a formula change with an adhesive.
I don't recall the HDA rev letter, but drives from the wrong batch
would fail in record time. Big scramble for DEC to plug the gap.

I think I've seen one drive die due to electronic failure, ever.

-ethan

P.S. - Somewhere I have a receipt for one at, IIRC, $26,000. Not my
money, thankfully. They were still a few thousand $$$ in 1988.
Received on Wed Mar 26 2003 - 08:57:01 GMT