From: news@alderson.users.panix.com   
      
   =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?=  writes:   
      
   > On 12/1/2025 1:02 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:   
   >>> On 2025-11-29, Dave Froble  wrote:   
   >>>> Why would anyone want one of these drives?  It sure isn't for storage   
   capacity.   
   >>>> There are many things from the past, but show me anyone who has any real   
   use for   
   >>>> them.  I mean, I do not collect wheels, covered wagons, model T Fords, and   
   >>>> certainly not an RA82 drive.   
      
   >>> Because some people care about how we got to where we are today.   
      
   >>> Around Europe, there are carefully preserved and some maintained   
   >>> historical train locomotives that are many decades old. Some are   
   >>> over a century old.   
      
   >> The RA81 and RA82 are not Model T Fords.  They are Maxwells, prone to   
   >> breaking down and leaving people stranded in the middle of the road.   
      
   >> When we were running many of them, we had a DEC FE who was on site a   
   >> couple days a week replacing heads, and without that support I would   
   >> not want to be running them.   
      
   >> There are many devices that should be preserved in working condition so that   
   >> new generations should see how they worked when they were new and experience   
   >> them working.  The RA81 should be left in the rack broken, so that new   
   >> generations can see how they were when they were new.   
      
   > RA81's and RA82's on a 8650.   
      
   > The RA82's were okay, but the RA81's crashed frequently. DEC field   
   > service knew that site very well.   
      
   > I have been told here that there were a manufacturing problem with   
   > RA81's and when the problem got fixed they stopped crashing all the   
   > time.   
      
   You've got the RA81 and RA82 backwards.  We had RA81s on a CI cluster at   
   Stanford, and they were pretty solid.   
      
   RA82s were not available for the 36 bit systems, but we heard about them from   
   our DEC FEs.   
      
   --   
   Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com   
         Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,   
   	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.   
   									--Galen   
      
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