DEC RL01/02, RK05/06/07 Cartridge Inspector/Cleaner

From: Ethan Dicks <dickset_at_amanda.spole.gov>
Date: Wed May 5 16:53:04 2004

On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 03:22:31PM -0400, Ashley Carder wrote:
> Does anyone here currently have a functioning RK05 drive?

Several, though as I mentioned earlier, only one has been used
in the past couple of years. I have an as-yet-unused-by-me
RK8E and one RK05J-16 pack, and a couple of RK11s (one RKV11D,
a couple of RK11Ds, and an RK11C) each with at least one
drive and stacks of RK05J-12s, mostly with copies of RT-11
and ancient university data sets on them.

> Has anyone here ever brought one back from the dead?

More or less - new foam, new filter, new NiCd batteries, and
a through cleaning. I did get to process two *pallets* of
drives for a former employer (c. 1988) and recover as many
working drives from the pile as possible. I think my boss
told me that four drives would be considered good work, and I
gave him six.

Besides head crashes (these were as-is drives), the most common
actual failure mode was burned-out lightbulbs in the optical
positioner feedback circuit. It was easy enough to check them...
open up the service panels and see if there's a light on the glass
scale by the heads... no light == bad. They were some bizarre
bulb assembly that we didn't bother trying to find replacements
for - we just robbed them from drives that were in worse shape
(dents, smashed doors, etc).

If you only have one "dead" drive, I'm not sure how you'd get
replacement parts, but my experience is that unless you know
the drive has had something catastrophic happen to it, it
probably only needs a severe cleaning and a PM on the
batteries, foam, etc.

That having been said, though, I wouldn't mount a critical
pack first. Always mount a scratch monkey!

-ethan

-- 
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S      Current South Pole Weather at 05-May-2004 21:40 Z
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Ethan.Dicks_at_amanda.spole.gov     http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
Received on Wed May 05 2004 - 16:53:04 BST

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