Copying in a real TU-58 one virtual TU-58 tape

On Thursday (09/29/2011 at 08:48AM -0400), Dan Gahlinger wrote: I am just using some jumper wires currently... three of them... Hook TxD of the PC to RxD+ of the TU-58 RxD PC TxD+ TU-58 GND PC GND TU-58 I use jumpers from Sparkfun, http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9389 F/F with a contact on each end that slides over a pin. I slide it over the pin in the 10-pin header on the TU-58 and slide it over the pin on the DB9M on the PC's serial port (well, at the end of a straight thru F->M cable). Note that the drive needs to be wired for RS423 mode and not RS422. The tech ref manual here, http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/dectape/EK-0TU58-TM-001_TU58tech.pdf on PDF page 44. I've got it talking now with a simple Linux app. But it appears that my drive has some issues. I can command it to seek to a particular block, the motor spins up, advances the tape a small amount and then stops, at which point the drive returns an "END PACKET" with an error status of "motor stopped". The motor is free to turn... even with a tape installed and I've scoped for usual things such as tach pulses coming back, etc. so the failure is non-obvious at this point. I did find that one of the tapes failed the first time the drive tried to move it. Broke the little belt inside just as I suspected might happen. Moved on to another tape and that one is holding together so far. More to investigate. Chris -- Chris Elmquist