Subject: Re: TU-58s (was Re: Some progress with my PDP-11/73 system)
From: "Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinedp3k at compsys.to>
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:43:19 -0400
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Allison wrote:
Sounds nice. I have a few BA-11VA (four dual
width slots)
and it's a challange to put enough boards to make a bootable
viable sytem in that. An 11/23, 256k ram, DLV11J and a Rom
card was full house and for storage the only choice was TU58
or Tu58 emulation (requires bukly balky PC).
Jerome Fine replies:
For this example (I assume this is an M8186), there
were dual MFM and ESDI controllers which have boot
ROMs for the hard drive (non-DEC of course). I still
use my dual ESDI controller. I no longer have the
MFM controller, but that was all the VT103 originally
had which was essential to run and boot an operating
system such as RT-11.
I have a few contollers (dual width) that are Both MFM and
SCSI that sound like those.
I keep putting it on my list of projects to do a simple IDE
for QBUS. the design goals would be dual width, boot rom on
board and uses a 2.5" drive on the card. So far I've only
seen one Qbus IDE and it was lacking for software. Software
driver for that hardware is for RT11 alone is a bit of a
project as I'd need both the FB and SJ versions of the
driver.
Allison