RX33 Flexible Disk Drive

DECmate III with RX33 in the system box underneath the monitor - the expansion box to the right contains an RX50 dual floppy drive

The RX33 Flexible Disk Drive was a half height floppy drive for 5.25" 1.2 MB floppies. It is a re-badged Teac FD-55GFR drive.

It is supported by the RQDX3 QBUS MFM disk controller; there was no UNIBUS controller for it. It was also used in a large number of other DEC products; e.g. in the MicroVAX 2000 and as a bootstrap device in Hierarchical Storage Controllers.

Specifications

• Weight - 1.10 kg (2.43 lb)
• Height - 4.32 cm (1.70 in)
• Width - 14.61 cm (5.75 in)
• Depth - 20.32 cm (8.00 in)
• Number of tracks - 80
• Number of heads - 2
• Track density - 96 tracks per inch
• Step rate - 3 ms per track
• Diskette size - 13.13 cm (5.25 in)
• Recording surfaces per diskette - 2
• Sectors per track
  • normal density - 10
  • high density - 15
• Capacity
  • Bytes per drive
    • high density - 409 KB
    • normal density - 1200 KB
  • Blocks per drive
    • high density - 800
    • normal density - 2400
• Block size - 512 bytes
• Data transfer rate (to and from media)
  • normal density - 250 Kbits per second
  • high density - 500 Kbits per second
• Operating power - 4.1 watts
• Standby power - 1.5 watts

Operating Conditions

• Temperature range - 10°C to 46°C (50°F to 115°F)
• Temperature change rate - 11°C (20°F) per hour, maximum
• Relative humidity - 20% to 80% noncondensing
• Maximum wet-bulb temperature - 45°C (113°F)
• Minimum dew-point temperature - 2°C (36°F)
• Altitude - 2400 m (8000 ft) maximum

(Reduce maximum temperature by 1.8°C for each 1,000 meter (1.0°F for each 1,000 ft) increase in altitude.)

Nonoperating Conditions

• Temperature - 34°C to 60°C (30°F) to 140°F)
• Temperature change rate - 20°C (36°F) per hour, maximum
• Relative humidity - 5% to 90%
• Maximum wet-bulb temperature - 45°C (113°F) packaged
• Altitude - 9100 m (30,000 ft) maximum

External links

• DEC RX33 Floppy Drive
• RX33 Flexible Disk Drive Illustrated Parts Breakdown
• RX33 Flexible Diskette Drive Brochure (ED-29590-45)