27 Sep
2011
27 Sep
'11
3 a.m.
On 09/27/2011 03:44 AM, SPC wrote:
Hi.
I have one TU-58. Doing a resume:
* The components work at 115 volts, even when you can change the PS current
to 220-240 volts.
* In appeareance the Current flows by the main board of the device (the RED
led indicates so)
* The wire wrapping is the stablished in factory (TU-58 manuals, Bitsavers)
* It has not stablished the 'boot' wire wrap for LSI-11
* I have one DEC console serial cable
* I have too a couple of Dectape II cartridges
With all these stuff, I should like to connect the TU-58 to the Serial Port
of my Laptop and manage the TU-58. The objective is:
* To put a virtual image in the Dectape II from the Laptop
* To dump the content of one Dectape II in the Laptop
Warning it's slow! And it's only 512 sectors of 512bytes.
The unique option similar to this that I want is one
MS-DOS driver in
SpareTime Gizmos, but to use the TU58 as one MS-DOS storage unit. But, what
I have in mind is similar but different at the same time. I want to manage
the TU-58 contents in DEC native format.
The TU58 has no native format. It's addressed as 512byte blocks.
Any other format is imposed but the host system, for example RT11,
RSX11, VMS (VMboot and VMS).
I know, in addition, of the existence of some TU-58
emulators, and in fact I
use them from time to time. And I'm not sure if one of these (TU58EM) has
this option available, but sure that someone in the list knows it.
I suppose then that some analysis of the STGiz MS-DOS driver plus the
diverse emulators of the TU-58 would be sufficient to begin to construct
some kind of software for this purpose.
But it's almost sure that someone has encountered this problem in the past
years and encountered one solution for it. Probably even with only one
communications software, a good knowledge of the RSP protocol, an one binary
image.
It's basically a binary packet protocal.
In the other hand, I am almost sure too that I need a
modification (or
better a modified plug) of the Serial Port in the Laptop (9-pin) as the
realized in the SLUs of the PDP-11 to allow the correct manage of the TU-58
from the laptop. I have the documentation of modifications to do in the SLUs
of the PDP-11, and in fact I did a couple of modified SLUs some time ago. In
the cas of the laptop it would be neccesary to one male-to-female plug.
The problem is the correct cabling inside it. I assume that I can do the
well-known probe-an-error but sure that exists some contrasted information
about the cable.
Laptop IO and PDP11 (or VAX) serial IO are very different. First you
need to be
able to generate a "break" as the RSP uses that to establish
communications and
synchronize.
Also laptop or other PC based serial will not have DEC compatable
connectors even
of the plugs and sockets are the same. This means you have to make a
cable that matches
TXD, RXD and signal ground (tu58 uses no other).
Allison