DEC RP03 pack imaging

[Roe]

Can anyone out there (including the museums) read and image an RP03 disk pack? I have a rare opportunity to retrieve UNIMAX, a specialized version of unix that supported V7 and system 5 syscalls, capable of demand page kernel that would run on a 256k 11/34 or /45.

 

[NeXT]

Try contacting the Living Computer Museum in Seattle or the Computer History Museum in Mountainview. I don't know if they still do it but I believe at one time they would dump old disks and packs, especially if they were historically valueable.

 

[Al Kossow]

Try contacting the Living Computer Museum in Seattle or the Computer History Museum in Mountainview. I don't know if they still do it but I believe at one time they would dump old disks and packs, especially if they were historically valueable.

CHM has no way to do this.

Reading old multi-platter disk packs is a risky business
As far as I know, there are no functioning RP03 drives anywhere in the world.
There was just a discussion about trying to save an RP03 in Canada on classiccmp
just because of how rare they are.

 

[RSX11M+]

Any idea what the recording density was on that vintage platter? Seems to me I've seen a nice presentation on it somewhere back in the day.

Is anyone out there using MOI technology to recover disk data? It could work on these old platter surfaces and would be non-destructive.

I guess I always assumed a commercial entity would emerge that employed this method to read old magnetic media [tape and disk] but have never heard of it in fact, being done. Thought about it a lot actually.

Of course, it doesn't help a museum wanting to maintain a working physical example.