bramwell@Datap.ab.ca (Bob Bramwell) (03/05/91)
I am the proud owner of two Xerox 1108 machines. Both have 40mB disks, one of which howls dismally whenever it runs. The disks are made by "Quantum" and are original equipment. Several questions: 1) Anybody know who Quantum is? They seem to make disks for the SUN Sparc machines too, but the last time I looked up Quantum in an electronic manufacturers directory I found four different companies by that name. 2) Anybody got spare 1108 disks in good working condition they'd like to unload? Let me know.... If they're 80mB, so much the better. 3) I have heard rumours that it may be possible to replace the disk with a faster, larger, not-exact-replacment. Any ideas? 4) I have a copy of Othello (11.??) and I am told it can be used to do low-level disk maintenance, like updating bad sector tables etc.. However, I have no idea how to drive in any but the most simple mode. Where can I find out? All information gratefully received. My return mail address may be flaky, so if you send stuff and I don't reply to you, try posting something short and sweet on this channel. Bob Bramwell Ph: 403/237-9500 Snail: 10th floor, 940 6th Av. SW, Calgary, AB, T2P3T1.
thorn@godot.RadOnc.UNC.EDU (Jesse Thorn) (03/07/91)
I tried sending e-mail but it bounced. To Bob Bramwell (bramwell@Datap.ab.ca) Hello, I worked with 1108s a number of years ago. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think that the following is basically correct. Quatum disks. Yes. Made by one of the largest drive manufacturers in the US. You should be able to find advertismenst for their drives by any number of dealers in computer magazines (MacUser MacWeek, etc have them!). I remember upgrading our 40MB drives to 80MB when our Lisp work environments exceeded the 40mb mark. I imagine that there are any number of compatible drives available. Call some of these dealers. I used Othello to do disk maintenance. There are at least 2 usage levels from what I remember. There is a limited mode and then a "super-user" mode. All of the interesting stuff is done in super-user mode. Entry to this mode is password protected. Once in, you can format disks, scan for bad blocks, update the bad block tables, etc. I was responsible at one time for maintaining about 30 1108s and this was a common maintance routine - bad blocks in the swap files would cause all sorts of nasty errors during paging operations! If you want more details send email and I'll try to dust off the memory banks! Out of curiosity, what are you using these for? They were GREAT machines that I remember fondly. Are you doing Lisp programming by any chance? Hope this helps Jesse Thorn - One time Lisp hacker thorn@godot.radonc.unc.edu
norm@hydro.wbst845e.xerox.com (Norm Crowfoot) (03/11/91)
Bob, Have you checked the obvious: that the drive belt isn't scraping and that the drive hold-down clamp hasn't worked itself loose? You're looking for the pre-SCSI form of disk interconnection, the so-called "SA-1000" interface. This was the connection interface for the larger 8" rigid disk drives that wre used in the 1108. Thus it's possible to add almost anyone's disk that matches this somewhat dated interface format. There are a number of "hopped-up" 1108 and 1186's within Xerox that are running a 150 MB disk, though I don't believe that it's a Quantum. Jesse's right, Quantum's still very much in the disk drive business, having one of the very popular 5" format 105 MB SCSI drives that's in a lot of units these days. If you change out the disk drive to a higher capacity, you'll have to do some messing with the Othello layer and also make certain that it'll play with whatever you're running. Viewpoint, for instance, needs a different software disk driver. If you're sticking in the Interlisp world, I suspect that simply altering the track formatting parameters through Othello would be sufficient. Even though I'm an employee of Xerox, these comments are simply my own and relate to my own days of being a grad student suffering with 1108's. -- | | Norm Crowfoot Voice: 716/422-2458 |\ | KBS Competency Center Internet: crowfoot@arisia.xerox.com | \ | Xerox Corp - MS: 0845-20C XNS: ncc:wbst845e:xerox | \| 780 Salt Road FAX: 716/422-2479 | | Webster, New York 14580 /|\ / | \