10 Apr
2024
10 Apr
'24
5:35 p.m.
1. I have read that the card and the drives were
compatible with the dec rx02 drives. Why would the CRDS even bother to redesign a card
where DEC had perfectly good working ones? Anyone know if there is any value in keeping
the FC-202 or just keep with the DEC cards?
A lot of the third-party controllers could talk to Shugart-style 8" floppy drives.
They can also usually *format* the diskettes, which the RX01/RX02 systems from DEC
can't do -- you have to use preformatted media. This isn't a *huge* deal since
RX01 is just IBM 3740 and you can format it on CP/M boxes, with ImageDisk, etc.
There's an XXDP utility to upconvert RX01 media to RX02, which is M2FM and very few
things can work with it.
Apparently a lot of small shops kept a CP/M box just for the task, the Alspa ACI-2 I had
was supposedly used like that.
2. Any idea on that other card?
https://w2hx.com/?prefix=x/What-Is-It/PDP-11-Thing/Board1/
Looks like a non-DEC Qniverter -- QBus to Unibus converter. If that's what it is,
you'd plug your Unibus cable into that pair of connectors on top and run it to
whatever Unibus device you were wanting to talk to, potentially another backplane full of
Unibus stuff. Commonish upgrade on e.g. CNC machines that were originally controlled by a
PDP-11/05 or something in one Unibus chassis, with another Unibus chassis full of
machine-specific cards.
Thanks,
Jonathan