RK05 Disks

Here are a couple of my RK05 drives, an RK05J and an RK05F: My RK05 drives, rack mounted. I actually have another drive in rougher shape (parts drive), not pictured. The RK05F drive has twice the capacity, but the media is not removable. Hence the "0/1" designation in the picture. (Sometime I should probably get around to changing drive "3" to be drive "2".) Each RK05 unit number corresponds to 1.6Mwords of storage, organized as 203 tracks, 2 surfaces, 16 sectors/track, and a sector size of 256 12-bit words. The transfer rate is about 20% faster than a floppy disk, at 102Kwords per second, and each unit holds roughly 41% more than a typical PC diskette. The average access time was about 11 percent faster than a floppy. For it's time, it was hot stuff -- the equipment pictured sold new for about $13,000 (plus installation). My hope is to interface these through my RK8F controller and DW8E to my large PDP-8/i system. Last updated on 02/25/23 02:21 vrs