On December 13, you wrote:
> I have a sick RD53 and would also be interested in getting it
> reformatted. If you get any positive replies please let me know. I
> too have phoned DEC, and they say that short of placing a service
> call for my Microvax II they can do nothing for me.

  I think your best bet would be to pick up a MicroVAX2000 or a
VAXstation2000 and use its ROM-based formatting utilities.  I've been
seeing them in the US$50 range for some time now; not too expensive to
be used as a formatting engine until NetBSD fully supports them...

  I have been told, however, that while the format is
RQDX3-compatible, the interleave is different.  I'm not sure if that'd
be a performance penalty in this case or not.  Anyone care to comment?


                           -Dave McGuire