From: "Brad Parker" <brad at heeltoe.com>
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2014 4:22 PM
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Need DEC BC80J-20 cable
On 12/15/13, 10:48 PM, Charles wrote:
I'm looking for a BC80J-20 cable...
that's the one that goes from the RL
controller card to the first drive, with a 40 pin header on one end and
that big quick-release connector on the other end.
(I am tired of failures and damage to the rigged ribbon cable/IDC header
I've been using, and now that I'm chasing a fault in my two-RL02 system,
I can't swap drives without taking the cover off to get to the header
connectors inside).
I think I'm looking for one of these as well. Or maybe someone here can
point me to what I really want :-)
I have an RL02 driver and an RL02 controller, but I seem to have
lost/misplaced the "cabinet kit". I could swear I had one at one point.
So, the RL02 drive has a terminator and a nice long round cable which
seems to have a 2x.1" header. But I believe I need the cable part which
is normally install on the cpu cabinet. My guess is it would cable a
shielded ribbon cable with a connector for the board header and the other
end would have a metal bracket and something to mate with the nice round
cable...
Is this even close?
-brad
Almost.
The metal bracket is a simple rectangular piece with 2 "slots" in it.
In a slot fits a "chassis" connector part, just like one of them on the
rear side of the RL02 drive. At one side you hook the drive cable,
at the other side is a 40-pin IDC header. The ribbon cable is indeed
a shielded one, it has a 40-pin IDC header at both sides.
If you have a defective (beyond repair ...) RL02 drive, you can use
one of the 2 cable connectors from the rear side. A small 40-wire
not-shielded ribbon cable (*) will probably work fine. There is no
"twist" in that cable, so a simple 1:1 female IDC header to female
IDC header is OK.
(*) Once, I had a some 2 meter long unshielded ribbon cable to
connect from the RK611 controller to the same "chassis" connector,
and then to an RK07 disk drive. I got lots of errors, traced with a
scope and logic analyzer ... After many hours I found out that
all problems went away when I used a shielded cable!
- Henk