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From: thorn@godot.RadOnc.UNC.EDU (Jesse Thorn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.xerox
Subject: Re: Xerox 1108 disk questions
Message-ID: <1991Mar7.144556.26602@godot.RadOnc.UNC.EDU>
Date: 7 Mar 91 14:45:56 GMT
Reply-To: thorn@godot.radonc.unc.edu ()
Organization: Radiation Oncology, NCMH/UNC, Chapel Hill, NC
Lines: 37


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