10 Dec
2008
10 Dec
'08
6:19 p.m.
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 2:16 PM, silvercreekvalley
<silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com> wrote:
I'd like to try and get a Kennedy tape drive
(9600) up
and running and wondered if anyone had any advice or
possible interface cards?
I'm ultimately wanting to connect this to a PDP 11, but
initially it would be good to connect this some how to a
regular PC.
Are there any cards available to do this? I do have older
PC's (this is vintage computing after all) ie with ISA
slots which I'm guessing would be required.
I have no experience with a Kennedy 9600.
If you can find a Computer Logics PCTD16 that should work in an old
16-bit ISA bus slot. I found a couple off of eBay a while back for
under $20 each. Building interface cables might take a bit of work to
split the 62-pin D-shell connector on the adapter to the (2x) 50-pin
connectors on the driver.
I have one PCTD16 connected to a Fujitsu M2444AC and one connected to
a different flavor drive. I wrote some simple real mode DOS utilities
to write TAP/TPC files to a tape and to read a tape to a TAP/TPC file.
I used that to create a 2.11BSD setup tape from a PC.
If your PDP-11 is a QBus PDP-11 there are multiple options. I've used
Emulex TC02, TC03 and QT13 adapters and Dilog DQ132 and DQ142
adapters. Those are usually not too hard to find on eBay, but the
examples currently listed seem overpriced. Making 50-pin cables for
these with ribbon cable is easy if you have proper tools.