unibus to modern disk interface?

On 10/14/2012 01:58 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: The bus interface side is not that hard for non-dma (slower PIO) and hust a bit more for DMA. However Ethan hit the nail on the head with driers for whatever is done. The best known is a Q-bus IDE (could also use CF) interface that likely worked fine but the list of Qbus OSs that would need support was huge. The hardware was by Qbus standards trivial. PDP-11/Qbus includes RT11, RSTS, RSX-11, Unix(many) Then we have MicroVAX, VMS, Ultrix, Netbsd.. Others? The hardware was never the show stopper it was software to use it. There are a few that are easy to simulate one being the TU58 tape. That interfaced via serial port. Its been done in the past. The serial interface limits speed but it beat the real tape by a mile. Another might the RL, RS, or RM disks, simulated the interface and registers and use a MPU to do the heavy lifting to a 64 or 256b Solid state simulation of a disk using flash or other technology. In the end it would be to identify the disks common to all those OSs (other MSPC) and create a controller that simulates that. MSPC has to many copyright and other ropes and chains to hurdle plus its largely black box. It's also an interface that requires a micro as it's locally intelligent (T-11 used in the past). But for the moment is a SCSI adaptor that has MSPC (CMD etal) is the easy way out. Allison