16 Jan
2016
16 Jan
'16
12:15 p.m.
Does anyone
have any sensible ideas as to what to try next. At the moment I have no idea if
it's the tape, heads, roller or what....
This might not be what you want, but I boot my 11/730 from a tu58
emulator running on a linux box. I used a little ttl<->rs232 converter
board. It works well and is reliable. If nothing more, it will let you load the microcode so
you can check out
the cpu.
True, but it is one more thing I have to set up and debug.
That R80, however. mmm. Those are cranky. And noisy.
At first I put a
Mine might be worse than most....
I took it apart 20 years ago (no not the HDA) to (a) get it out of the rack -- it's
heavy and (b) to repair some damage to the casing. Never did the latter, I didn't
really have the tools at the time. And you guessed it, I can't find all the bits now.
Fortunately I have the main bits -- the casing, the HDA, the PSU, the spindle motor,
the 4 main PCBs, etc. What I am missing are all the nuts and bolts (and being UNC
they are not easy to get over here), some of the internal cables (trivial to make IDC
ribbon cables), the motor belt (ouch!, it's different on 50Hz models) and the hardest
to make, the brackets for the gas struts. I have the gas struts but not the brackets,
clevis pins, etc to fix them to the bottom case and logic chassis. Making those will
be 'fun'. They may still turn up of course...
UDA50 in to boot off more modern disks. But that took
2 slots so I
I do not want a Unibus expansion cabinet, I want to put everything in the CPU box.
Which means I really want to keep that R80 on the Integrated Disk Controller (I do
not want to try running from RL02s!). This, alas, means I am not going to have
ethernet since AFAIK you can't run the cable through that odd cable tray thing on
the 11/730. And a UDA50 is out!
In any case, what would I link a UDA50 to? RA8x's are going to be as bad as the R80
(very similar design). RA90s, well, I met those in 'real use' in the 1990's.
No thanks!
[...]
ps: tu58 controller boards are easy to find. I have
at least 4-5 of
them. The rollers are the issue, when they turn to goo.
The controller is also not hard to fix. I have the printset, there is nothing I don't
understand about it.
Yes, my rollers have turned to goo. I've tried suitably-sized O-rings on home-made
metal hubs. The tape seems to move at the right speed, given the data rate is right
some of the time (and when it isn't, I don't think it's the roller slipping)
-tony