20 Dec
2013
20 Dec
'13
1:38 p.m.
On 12/20/13 8:51 AM, John Wilson 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. Eventually I'd like to build USB interfaces
for all the basic DEC disks, to make them look like USB flash disks, so that
they'll work with any OS or emulator or utility or just the Weenix "dd"
command.
I mentioned this to John and Brad off-list. Brad's RL02 Unibus interface got
me off my butt on a project I've been thinking about for a long time to interface
Omnibus, Unibus and Qbus to peripherals using 10/100 Ethernet as the transport.
For example, for a DECtape you have an Omnibus card that looks like a TC08 to the
computer, and talks at the block level to a TU56 through Ethernet. The same for
a TC11, or a QBus TC11 (which never existed in real life). The topology is however
you plug the Ethernet together, so you could have a simulated peripheral running
off of a Linux box talking to a real computer or a simulator talking to a real
peripheral, or a PDP11 and PDP8 sharing a TU56 (obviously not at the same time).
The two storage devices I was going to start on were the TU56 (the drive-side adapter
would
have integral G888 replacements) and RK05.
The Omnibus card is going to have a few extra things on it (32k of memory and an RF08
emulator)