20 Mar
2007
20 Mar
'07
8:45 p.m.
On 3/20/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
You might want to keep your eye out for a 3rd
party disk controller with the bootstrap built in.
That's a good point. I have more than one Emulex QD21, a Dilog DQ696,
and a Sigma RDQ11, which are all Q-bus ESDI controllers and they all
have firmware with boot and built-in formatting support. They were
much cheaper on eBay than Q-bus SCSI controllers, although SCSI drives
are basically free and you'll pay something for an ESDI drive, but not
as much as for a large working MFM drive.
Another plus of a SCSI controller is that you might be able to use it
to boot a SCSI CD-ROM. I have that working with a Dilog SQ706A SCSI
controller and a Plextor SCSI CD-ROM in my 11/73.
But if you do have a working RQDX3 and working RD drives it's probably
still cheaper to get a board you can put a boot ROM on. That's an
exercise I haven't gone through myself, yet.
-Glen