HP/DEC/Compaq

With much sacrifice (bye bye three ATX cases filled with varying dual Ppro, dual PIII and dual PII hardware... and an 8088 clone) I managed to negotiate getting two DEC RK05J's into the house.





First off, yes, the head assembly is missing form both units but I managed to locate two more from parts units and they have not yet been installed and both power up fine with no smoke or explosions.
Anyways, I see there are a few flip chips installed in the unit but I don't know if that is the actual drive controller (and all I'm missing is one card which breaks out into a ribbon cable and plugs into the PDP backplane of your choice) or just the fridge logic for the drive itself.
Anyone have any knowledge on this? Google tells me that this is apparently one of the most popular drives for the 8/e and 11 systems among others and they go in-depth on the drive but barely make note let alone take pictures of the interface.
Also, what can I use to substitute the status panel bulbs? It looks like the last user gradually moved them around as they burned out and now I only have bulbs for the FAULT, READ, and WRITE indicators.

firstly, i don't think you have enough logic there for anything but the drive electronics; head, front panel, and spindle. but some m-logic cards were pretty advanced. doubtful though.
secondly, wth would you get those for without disk packs and processor?
thirdly, check out bitsavers for any hope of software and/or docs.

PDP hardware, wow. You are living the dream man.

I'm living no dream yet. I'll be living it when I find a PDP-8 to run this. I have this addiction to buy the tires before I buy the car.
Honestly, this is the first time I have ever seen something PDP related in the flesh. Even after that fiasco last week, I managed to find a place for them and my parents are not yellin'.

Getting a PDP-8 or 11 to drive these are not done in jiffy. Getting the parts when you have the opportunity is not a bad idea.

And only ancient PDP-11's would even be able to drive it. I seriously doubt there was ever a Q-Bus controller for the RK05, and the RK05 was long since replaced with the RL01/RL02 and RK07's by the time the 22-bit PDP's were available, from what I recall.

Nice museum piece you've got there, but I doubt you're going to find the pre-11/34 hardware to drive it.

And don't run it for too long without replacing the electolytics first.

Chris

I'm going to give up restoring them and set them aside as parts units. Even if I ever do get replacement head units I need the alignment pack.