Apologies for the rough nature of this page. In it’s present state, this page just captures notes from my attempts to get some RK05 drives working on my PDP-11/34
Really Basic Stuff
- Inside the RK05, check the lever switch is in the UP position
- Under RT11, the RK05 shows up as RKn: (ie RK0:, RK1:, etc)
- When a cartirdge is loaded (and the PDP-11 is turned on) the PWR, RDY and ONCYL lights will be on
- ONCYL seems to indicate that the drive is NOT seeking (ie it does not mean “on cylinder 0”)
RK05B S/N WF8032
I started working on this drive in June 2021.
This is the drive that was in the Industrial 8 H967 cabinet. It needs new rubber isolation mounts.
PAKs don’t always sit properly on the right-hand pin support.
Front panel uses bulbs. All checked/replaced in June 2021. Lovely and bright.
I’ve been able to initialise, read and write 2 RK05 cartridges with this drive. However, over time they have deteriorated and one of them now has bad blocks in the system area and can’t be used.
However, on 27/7/21 I decided to INIT/BADBLOCKS a 3rd pack. It did lots of seeking during the INIT process, but reported 0 bad blocks. I was then able to install date-patched RT-11 5.3 on to it from DX0. That worked well, and it boots without error. This 3rd PAK has been reserved to use exclusively with this drive.
On 27/07/21 I also made a 4th PAK the same as the 3rd one. This also did lots of seeking during INIT/BADBLOCKS but also reported 0 bad blocks. Date-patched RT-11 V5.3 was installed on it, and it boots fine. This 4th PAK is intended to be used on other RK05 drives.
RK05 Cartridge S/N ??
This cartridge has a manufacture date underside of “OCT 23 ’79”.
27/07/2021
- INIT/BADBLOCKS done in WF8032
- 0 bad blocks! But lots of seeks
- RT11 v5.3 date patched installed
- Boots OK
- Don’t use in any other drive
25/04/2022
- Cleaned and inspected
- Upper surface has minor damage at Cylinder 0
- Lower surface has no damage
- Did INIT/BADBOCKS on WF27046 with no badblocks and no re-seeks
- RT11 v4.3 Y2K patched installed
- Boots fine on 11/34
26/04/2022
- Used copy/sys/verify to copy 259 files (4362 blocks) on to this disk. No re-seeks or errors
23/06/2024
- Used as scratch disk in WF8032, without errors
- Did INIT/BADBLOCKS with no bad blocks and no re-seeks!
- used COPY/SYS/VERIFY to load RT11 v5.3 from DX0
- Boots on 11/34 from DX0
- Then used PDP11GUI to write RT11V4 with 4 Advent files (rt11v4-20240623.rk05)