20 Dec
2013
20 Dec
'13
12:05 p.m.
On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 11:51 AM, John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> wrote:
A direct USB-to-RL01/02 interface is on my to-do list
but there's a bunch
of stuff higher up on the list.
That sounds like a neat thing to work on. Way back in the day, c. 1986
or so, I had an Amiga, and an RL01 on an RL8A on my PDP-8/a and
worked with RL02s on RL11s at work. We made 68000-based Unibus
and Qbus interfaces, so I naturally wondered what it would take to
adapt the Zorro Bus (or the 86-pin SOTS bus on the A1000, really)
to the Unibus so I could use an RL11 on it. We had all the necessary
components for a simple Amiga-Unibus adapter, but the Amiga doesn't
have a DMA controller, so NPRs added a dimension of complexity I
wasn't prepared to deal with.
A year later, I solved the problem by buying a "Wedge" from
Canada - it was an 8-bit ISA bridge that included AmigaDOS
drivers for the WX-1 MFM interface. 20MB for $500 total, and
a lot less work than trying to make a Unibus card work.
Still... I occasionally wish to be able to easily read and write
RL02 packs with fewer active parts between me and it (right
now, my "simple" solution is a modern machine, a serial port,
a PDP-11, and vtserver).
If you ever do work on a USB RL02 interface, I'll be happy
to help test it.
-ethan