[comp.sys.dec] old PDP11/23 & RL02 drive problems

guest@vu-vlsi.UUCP (visitors) (11/14/87)

The physics department here just received a donation of a fairly old and dusty
PDP11/23 with two RL02 drives, and hardly any documentation.  I looked it over,
dusted it off (there must have been a pound of dust just in the cpu), and
and tried to get it running.  There is one problem, though (isn't there always)
the disk drives don't seem to work. 

When the system is turned on, the drives make the usual "clunk" noise and the
load lights come on in a few seconds, but this is where the normal behavior
ends.  When I load a disk, the load light doesn't go out, and the ready light
never comes on.

I have been told to check to see if the spindle turns when the drives are
powered up, because this is supposed to happen, but this is not the case.  I
would suspect that the drive motor is bad, but both drives behave exactly the
same, and who would expect this to happen to both drives.

I think the CPU is ok because when I try to boot the system, flipping the
restart key makes the system tells me "28" and "START?" which I understand is
what is supposed to happen.

Any help/comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

P.S.  anyone out there familiar with DSM11 or know where I can get UNIX for
this system?
 
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| Mark Schaffer        | BITNET: 164485913@vuvaxcom                          |
| Villanova University | UUCP:   ...{ihnp4!psuvax1,burdvax,cbmvax,pyrnj,bpa} |
| (Go Wildcats!)       |           !vu-vlsi!excalibur!164485913              |
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