6 Oct
1999
6 Oct
'99
4:01 p.m.
--- Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com> wrote:
That is the only RL controller I am aware of. OTOH, I like it a lot. I
got one when I could not get RK05 drives, but I could get RL01 drives for
around $100 plus shipping (over ten years ago). At that time, RL02's were
still many hundreds.
It's not comforting to load papertape basic and Star Trek at 10cps... that's
a *lot* of tape. I was glad to have a highspeed reader on the 12Kw -8/L.
Yup, that would be the DEC "standard" three
loop current loop interface.
(Tx loop, Rx loop, reader-run loop).
Is there a picture of the "standard" 20mA connector with pinout? I want to
test my ASR-33 up against a VT220 and I need at least to make a pin-swabbing
cable if I don't need a 12V power supply, too.
Yep.
Unfortunately I dont have any peripherals. Except the one RL01, and
apparently I dont have an interface board for that.
I don't believe DEC made a Quad RL controller. I've only seen the M8433
which is a hex wide RL controller that plugs into the PDP-8/a. >If the core memory doesnt work out, is the MOS
memory actually affordable?
I can't say for quad MOS. I've only got hex MOS... I haven't paid over $50
a board for any of it.
>Anyone willing to tell me some PDP parts suppliers
that may have some
>interface boards,
I have bought much from Continental Computers including an RL8A, KT8A and 128Kw
memory board (MM8A-?) but you have to know by handle number what to ask for. I
rattled off a list of boards and they only had two or three of the ones I was
interested in.
> like whatever I need to hook up that RL01 (what
exactly
>is a RL01 anyways).
An RL01 is a 5Mb, single platter, embedded servo-style, removable drive. The
RL02 is a 10Mb version of the same technology. They aren't all that fast, but
they were plentiful, being available for the -8, -11 and various flavors of
VAXen. IMHO, there is much less to maintain than than with RK05s. The OS/8
driver for the RL01 defines three logical units per physical drive, 40%, 40%
and 20% of the capacity, but the third unit is slower because it fills the
nooks and crannies around the first two units. It's because of a physical
device size limitation in OS/8.
Maybe I should be looking to add floppy drives, etc.
Floppies are nice if you have a stack of media with stuff on it. I have
a few games and such. I'd like to be able to back them up to a modern machine
and cut a CD-ROM of the disk images. To that end, I've just extracted a
Tandon TM-848 floppy from my DataRam Q22 box and need to see about a power
harness (six pin, H-shaped) and a 34<->50 pin cable to hook it up to an old
box to do media conversion.
>OR, are people using IBM's as a terminal, and
running some program that
>pretends to be an attached paper tape reader/punch unit? That might do
>for starters, though its not anywhere near as satisfying.
If you didn't have a teletype, I guess a TTY emulator on a PC would be
a way to go, but I don't know of any punch/reader emulating software, per
se. I guess you could adapt ProComm or something like it that can upload
and download data over the application.
From there you
have several choices, perhaps the simplest is the ASR33 with
paper tape software.
As attendees to VCF can attest, it makes a loud but
somehow comforting ratcheting sound to hear FOCAL or some other system
being loaded at 10 CPS. On Highgate there is software for RX01's (OS/8 et al) Lots of fun ahead,
--Chuck
For sure!
-ethan
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