8 Oct
2007
8 Oct
'07
3:40 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
This is useful to know. I've only had experience using Will Kranz' TU58
emulator on a PC running against my PDP-11/23+, but if it's just a cable
then it'll be pretty easy to get it connected to the RT-11 environment
and capture the images. A simple serial cable is no sweat.
In the last couple of days I've had a chance to poke around inside and
extract the carts. Looks like there are four altogether (I thought
there were six), three of which look to be DEC original carts for bits
of FORTRAN 4.4, and the fourth is some kind of driver/diagnostic tape
for the Systems Industries 9700 board, looks like.
trying to use them in the VAX (eventually)? Is
it just a standard
serial connection coming off of the drive, like the desktop TU58
subsystems, or is it something lower level?
Electrically, it's a standard serial interface, but I think there
might be an odd cable because it's an 11/750-internal cable. Nothing
insurmountable with a willingness to make a cable adapater.
Yes, you could use an 11/23+, or even a modern machine running DOS or
UNIX and one of the several TU-58-slurping programs out there.
I personally use a dual TU58 from an 11/725 and a PC
to read my carts.
I forget, at the moment, which program I'm using, but it's one of the
old, standard ones that's been kicking around for years. I have about
an 80% success rate with the tapes I've read so far.
Mmmm... I doubt the four carts that I have are particularly rare,
someone probably has an image of these already, but I just like to copy
everything that comes my way. Who knows? And based on your success
rate, if I see similar results, I might get lucky and be able to copy
the four carts I have, with an imaginary fifth cart making up the 20%
that are unreadable. ;-)
Oh... you could eventually substitute a PC or
FLASH-based TU58
emulator in place of the drive, but in practice, we only ever used our
TU58 for booting diagnostics or Standalone Backup for OS installs, or
loading the DEC Microcode patch... come to think of it... the
Microcode patch (which we started using around VMS 4.6 or 4.7) would
be an excellent use for a TU58 emulator.
I'm not too worried about this at the moment, at worst I can use a PC
running some type of TU58 emulation, but a simple dedicated device might
come in handy when all of these TU58s start dying off for good, replaced
roller or not.
P.S. - as for adding wires to the backplane, any
wire-wrap tool should
suffice, including the manual tool that Radio Shack used to sell
(looks like a Jeweler's Screwdriver, with a wire-stripper stored in
the handle). No unusual tools (beyond ordinary WW tools) are
required.
Okay, I can probably handle that. I have a simple WW tool exactly as
you describe that I occasionally use on DLV11-Js and whatnot, so as long
as I know what pins to connect, should be doable. ;-)
P.P.S - if you are *lucky*, there are plastic
alignment blocks on the
backplane where the cables tap into the off-board I/O area. If not,
Haven't examined that side of the backplane yet...
you might want to track down the installation manual
for the SI
9700/9900.
So far no luck on bitsaves or manx. I'm still on the hunt, though...
- Jared