16 Jan
2016
16 Jan
'16
3:51 p.m.
I had considered that, or one of the TU58
emulators that use SD cards or
similar but (a) I am trying to restore this VAX, not make a machine that runs
VAX software and is not original and (b) I do have this moral objection to
using more components to load the microcode than in the rest of the machine.
I am in that same camp. I am presently using TU58 emulation to make progress on the
rest of the system, but I do plan to try to get my original drive and tapes working in
the
future. Even if I immediately unplug it and plug an emulator back in, because I
thoroughly
distrust the tape cartridge design and I am not confident that any of my tapes are any
good. I would like to make an SD card based emulator that clicks into place in one of
the tape slots and the plugs into the console I place
if the original drive, so it can be as
unobtrusive and standalone as possible.
Even so it's not how the machine was designed to boot.... I really do want to get it
back
as DEC intended if at all possible. Even if I have to make a formatter for blank tape
cartridges or something.
[...]
I put together hardware to use a RasPi instead so the
730 doesn't need to be tethered
to a laptop, but I haven't gotten that working yet.
'Haven't gotten that working yet' :-). That's how I feel about doing
something like this
(quite apart from the 'moral' aspects) I am having to do battle with things that
may or
may not work, may or may not be well documented (at least the TU58 is well documented)
and am likely to spend a lot of time getting nowhere.
I have Ethernet in my 730, though I don't have it
working yet. My experience is that trying to
route the round AUI cable through the bottom tray with the ribbon cables is doomed to
failure,
but the cable can instead be routed over the top of the cards, through openings in the
power
supply area, then along the folding gantry along with the power cables. I haven't
gotten
networking up and running on my VAX yet, and I don't yet know what combination of
hardware,
software and operator ignorance is causing it to not work. I'm still pretty happy
that I can
boot VMS from either the R80 or RL02.
That's not a bad idea.... I do have a DELUA somewhere I think. Might be worth trying
it in place
of 1M of RAM. But let's get the CPU working first....
I have the RL brought out to the connector panel, but no drives hooked up to that. I have
a
TS05 magtape to go on top of the rack. It needs a rebuild too. The door is smashed and
mostly missing, the rubber (?) pads that lock the supply spool are dead, etc. Spent the
morning
making a reasonable substitute for the Cipher reel hight setting tool.
-tony