In article <200505080629.j486TVg00882@opihi.ucsd.edu>,
Carl Lowenstein writes:
>> Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 10:02:23 -0400
>> To: info-pdp11@village.org
>> From: will kranz
>> Subject: Re: HELP with PDP-11/23 (RQDX)
>>
>> At 02:02 AM 05/07/05 -0400, you wrote:
>> >William Korvine wrote:
>> >> I notice on E-bay an M7555 MFM controller card. It seems a different
>> >> (later) vintage than the 11/23, but I was considering it. Do you know if
>> >> it would work? I should be able to dig up an MFM drive somewhere I think.
>> >
>> Douglas A. Gwyn then gave a detailed reply (as usual).
>> There is nothing in what Doug said that I can fault.
>>
>> However finding an affordable and functional MFM drive can be more
>> of a problem than you might imagine. I watch and bid on Ebay, but
>> even ignoring the compatibility issues with the RD5x series drives
>> I can rarely find/afford them. But definately try, you probably can get
>> an RX50 somewhere and a floppy based system is a lot better than a
>> a system with no storage capacity. ALso in my experience one sees
>> a lot more RQDX controllers than the cables and RQDXE distribion panel.
>> Odd but seems to be the case.
>
> Surely this is because cables get lost easily, and distribution panels
> don't look like they are very important since they only have connectors
> on them.
>

Actually, there is nothing special about any of the cables so they
often end up being used for other things when the RQDX3 retires or
just thrown in the box with all the other ribbon cables. As for
the distribution panels, they were part of the enclosure and I don't
know anyone who ever removed them when they changed the box over to
SCSI or other disktypes. I know I never have.

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include