TU-58s (was Re: Some progress with my PDP-11/73 system)

Jerome Fine replies: At some time or other, I saw a VT103 with dual TU-58 drives in the bottom. As noted, it took about the lunch break to boot. However, a VT103 can actually support a PDP-11/73 with all 4 MBytes of memory if the backplane is upgraded to 22 bits. The other 2 quad slots can have items like a TQK70, a DHQ11 and an RQD11-EC which allows up to 4 * EDSI hard drives. In the case of ESDI hard drives, I STRONGLY suggest used a separate power supply. Otherwise, an RQDX3 with an RD51 can also be used and it is then possible to place the RD51 under the tube. At that point, you can play games with those PC generation of kids and tell that that you don't even need a computer, just a monitor and keyboard! If you use a dual PDP-11/73 or PDP-11/23 with a DLV11-J (and no boot ROMs on the CPU), then the SIGMA controllers are very handy, either a dual MFM (or ESDI) version or the quad ESDI version. Again, with the dual MFM version, an RD51 (ST412) can be placed under the tube and use the internal power supply of the VT103. It must be about 20 years ago that I did this conversion of the RD51 hard drive under the tube. I think I still have the backup VT103, but without any boards or a suitable controller. With any ESDI drives, limit the use of the internal power supply of the VT103 to a single drive for less than 10 seconds which would probably be enough to boot and copy any needed files to the VM: device. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.