[olug] DEC Drives

[Daniel Pfile]

Charles Bird wrote:
> Can someone tell me what is so special about the Digital"DEC" RZ57-E SCSI 5.25 inch HDDs?
> 
> Looks like they are only 1.0GB
> 
> I see alot online for a what I thought is a high price, just saw a refurb for 350.00USD.
> 
> So, now I am curious and I can not figure out what the big whoop is.
> 
> MTBF perhaps? is that it?
> 

Nothing that special about them, I've found them new for $40. When I 
worked on vaxen not too long ago, we had to use original dec equipment 
whenever possible to keep the system in spec. If we could prove and less 
expensive replacement would work, we could document how, test it on 
non-production, and request it be used instead. For example; are you 
sure that generic winchester disk is going to talk through the scsi 
converter, over the dssi bus, and into every cluster node?

Just goes with the turf when working on old systems like then. When 
they're still being used in places like fortune 500 and military, you 
want them to stay up, and a few hundred buck isn't a big deal.

-- Daniel