Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!polyslo!jdudeck
From: jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: RL02 question
Message-ID: <25f1ed5a.29b0@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 5 Mar 90 04:38:50 GMT
References: <1990Feb15.023941.11459@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <916@decus.com.au>
Reply-To: jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck)
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 17


In article <916@decus.com.au> stewart_andy@decus.com.au (Andy Stewart) writes:
>In article <1990Feb15.023941.11459@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, paulf@bodega.stanford.edu (Paul Flaherty) writes:
>> I recently acquired an 11/730 with the standard pair of RL02s (hey it was
>> free, and working).  After having moved the little beastie a block, the
>> drives fault on powerup.  Anyone have any ideas what might be causing this?
>
I'm no great expert on DEC hardware, but I have seen this problem before.
Of course, something may have failed in the drives, but my experiences
showed that RL02's are quite sensitive to the cable arrangement.  Of course
you have to have a terminator block connected at the end of the chain.  I 
suppose you have it in place.  But I found with one set of drives that
it made a difference which order the drives were physically daisy-chained
in.  I suppose that one or more of the drives was actually out of spec,
but as long as I got the right combination of connections, it worked fine,
and has been for years.  Also, I also discovered that it is possible to
bend the contacts inside the connectors so that they don't make contact.

-- 
John Dudeck                           "You want to read the code closely..." 
jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu             -- C. Staley, in OS course, teaching 
ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549          Tanenbaum's MINIX operating system.