26 Jul
2012
26 Jul
'12
5:27 a.m.
On 07/26/2012 03:36 AM, Camiel Vanderhoeven wrote:
er
I read about the TU58 emulator that runs on Linux, and I'm thinking of
putting a DECserver into the rack with the PDP11's, and use virtual
TTY's on a Linux box that connect to the PDP11's over the DECserver,
then run multiple instances of the emulator so each PDP has one or
more emulated TU58's.
I know the "real" TU58 tapes can hold something like 256K of data. Are
the operating systems aware of this limit, or could you get by with
emulating a larger tape?
Yes it has been done but you need to patch the driver.
I dont know if there was a easy way to do this.
The alternate is to make the device create multiple (up to two)
"drives".
Its a good idea. I have a product that was done maybe 15 years ago
by Bob (spare time gizmos) that emulated a tu58 using 512K of Ram
and a battery backup. Much faster as it didn't have the physical
access time limitations. (rewind or fast forward to block).
There are also software emulators of tu58 on the net that run on
PCs. That makes it easy to change "tapes".
Allison