HP Optical Jukebox (was: [TCLUG:15619] Re: SGI INDY BOXEN)

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

>> anybody want an HP Optical Jukebox?

>         can you control it through Linux (or *BSD, or some
> open-source program)?
>
>         is it now cheaper to just go out and buy a hefty HDD and get all the
> storage space, with more speed and less electricity cost (I hear those
> things suck *lots* of power)?

First of all, I was sort of kidding.  If somebody wants to make me a reasonable
offer, I could be persuaded to get rid of this thing, but it *would* mean
finding something else to pile all my books on...

I'm not sitting next to the thing right now, so I'm going from memory here.
Again, if somebody is seriously interested, I'll try to get some more accurate
info for you.

The Jukebox is in a half-height HP rack -- something like 4' tall, 2' wide and
3.5' deep (I was just barely able to fit it in the back seat of my Saturn).  It
makes a swell end-table, or those of you looking to decorate your rec room could
maybe hollow it out, install some big Peltier coolers and make a fridge for your
bar.

It runs on standard household current, and hooks to your computer via plain ol'
SCSI.  I have all the cables.

It holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 double-sided HP optical platters.
These are big cartridges with re-writable double-sided optical media inside.
This jukebox will (I think) only read or write an older variety of cartridge
which are no longer manufactured.  You could probably find some if you hunted,
and I may have a few spares around.  I'll have to look.

I'm taking a wild stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing the maximum storage
capacity of this contraption, fully populated, is on the order of 23GB --
although if it supports the newer platters, it could be 3 or 4 times that.  But,
read on...

There are two read/write bays in the machine, which means that to your PC, this
machine will look like two SCSI drives.  In order to swap platters, you must
unmount one of the drives, push the buttons on the front of the jukebox to store
one platter and load another, and then remount the drive.  In order to use
automounting when we had the thing in production, we had to add a special
appliance, which I don't have -- however, this was on an HP 3000, running MPE/ix
(which has to be one of the weirdest OSes I've ever encountered -- imagine a
hardcore, seriously robust mainframe OS evolved from a Commodore 64).  If you're
clever and have sufficient spare time, you could try to write your own automount
controller, but I can't guarantee that this is even theoretically possible.

So, if you're thinking of making an offer on this, hopefully it's for one of the
following reasons:

  -You're looking for a Sisyphean and laughably pointless retrocomputing
project.

  -You're looking for an oversized case to stuff with hypercooled computer
components or beverages. (That's my basic plan for the thing if I ever find the
time to work on it)

  -You're looking for something to pile all your books on.

--
Eric Hillman
UNIX Sysadmin/Webmaster
City & County Credit Union
ehillman@cccu.com