20 Mar
2000
20 Mar
'00
3:13 a.m.
--- John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com> wrote:
Mine just arrived this morning, I had ordered it from
Netpliance's own
800 # so evidently at least *they* still have stock even if CC doesn't
(suits me, the nearest CC is 1.5 hours away from me anyway).
Good for you. I didn't want to pay the shipping and I can afford to wait
a week or two.
In keeping with nerd tradition I've got the thing
all in pieces before even
powering it on for the first time --
Way to go.
But the 44-pin connector is right there as promised.
I'm thinking of maybe
doing a tiny PCB rather than soldering 44 individual wires on...
There's great hack running around where you take a regular 44-pin cable
that's long enough and attach a second connector immediately adjacent to
the connector on one end. You use the inner pins of the end connector
and the outer pins on the new connector to attach to the motherboard.
-------------------
|| ||||
^^ (use these "pins")
drive end motherboard end
Since one way to view the problem is that the motherboard connector is
on the "wrong side" of the PCB (causing pin 1 to map to pin 2, etc),
couldn't you do make a cable like this...
||
--------------------
||
Wouldn't that simulate having a connector on the wrong side and reverse
the effect of the motherboard wiring?
I wonder if there's a +12V source in here anywhere
so that standard 40-pin
IDE drives could be used too and not just laptop drives?
AFAIK, there is no ready source of 12V. Also, consider the power draw. A
laptop drive pulls 500-700mA (2,5-3.5W), a desktop drive draws closer to
9W-15W. It's even a consideration when choosing a different
CPU (ISTR the WinChip180 is rated at ~9W, most Pentia suck around 13-17W).
-ethan
ObClassic: there's plenty of space on the flash disk to stick a small OS
and a variety of apps including Kermit. If you hacked the flash and disabled
the hard disk (or had a way to specify the boot order), you could bring it
up by default into a terminal program and use it as a console if it weren't
running some other app. Yes, a dumb terminal is cheaper and probably more
VT100 compliant (double-high characters spring to mind immediately), but a
real DEC terminal is not as portable.
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20 Mar
20 Mar
4:32 a.m.
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5:08 a.m.
On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 09:13:56AM -0800, Ethan Dicks wrote:
There's great hack running around where you take a
regular 44-pin cable
that's long enough and attach a second connector immediately adjacent to
the connector on one end. You use the inner pins of the end connector
and the outer pins on the new connector to attach to the motherboard.
-------------------
|| ||||
^^ (use these "pins")
drive end motherboard end
Cute! Well that sure beats slicing the cable up into 22 pairs and trying to
get them stay down in the "twisted" position while you put on a connector.
||
--------------------
||
Wouldn't that simulate having a connector on the wrong side and reverse
the effect of the motherboard wiring?
Unfortunately not, IDC connectors don't work that way. You'll just tap the
same wires in different places, it's as if you took a regular cable and just
folded one end over, nothing has changed. I remember confusing the hell out
of myself with this the first time I tried to get a DZ11A cab kit working...
AFAIK, there is no ready source of 12V. Also,
consider the power draw. A
laptop drive pulls 500-700mA (2,5-3.5W), a desktop drive draws closer to
9W-15W. It's even a consideration when choosing a different
CPU (ISTR the WinChip180 is rated at ~9W, most Pentia suck around 13-17W).
Yeah actually I was wondering if the laptop drive is already pushing things.
The power supply is really tiny (integrated on the main board) and it's
powered by a puny wall wart transformer, the label says 81VA but even that's
hard to imagine given how light it is.
ObClassic: there's plenty of space on the flash
disk to stick a small OS
and a variety of apps including Kermit.
I was thinking, making a PCMCIA flash card adapter for the 44-pin cable
wouldn't be hard at all, that might be another easy way to get stuff in
and out.
If you hacked the flash and disabled
the hard disk (or had a way to specify the boot order), you could bring it
up by default into a terminal program and use it as a console if it weren't
running some other app. Yes, a dumb terminal is cheaper and probably more
VT100 compliant (double-high characters spring to mind immediately), but a
real DEC terminal is not as portable.
Yeah I *wish* someone was making ASCII terminals like this box, it's perfect
for one, at least part time. But the box has too much potential to actually
*dedicate* your only one as being just a small/light VT100 replacement, which
is sort of a shame.
But I figure, even if the Netpliance folks close the loophole (which seems
inevitable given all the press it's gotten) and we can't buy these boxes for
$99.95 for much longer, the regular users will get tired of them eventually
and there will be piles of them on eBay in a year or two, probably for even
less than the $99.95. *That* will be the perfect time to put one on every
flat surface in the whole house! Meanwhile, gotta get an order out to Digikey.
John Wilson
D Bit
6 a.m.
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7:32 a.m.
New subject: DEC RAxx drive
Oh, and don't get me started on RA60/RA80 cables.
Those darn things work
by magic.
What's magic about them?
I just got some RA drives (along with a VAX-11/785 containing a UDA50),
and don't know anything about the cabling.
I have both DEC RA drives and some System Industries clones.
8:44 a.m.
New subject: DEC RAxx drive
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10:38 a.m.
New subject: DEC RAxx drive
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: DEC RAxx drive
OK, as I understand it...
Black cables do a mirror flip between the 2 ends. White cables don't.
Bulkhead adapters (obviously) do a mirror flip.
Now what I can't remember is whether you need a
mirror flip between
the
controller and the drive (-> an odd number total of
bulkheads and
black
cables) or not. What I can remember is that whatever
combination you
have
doesn't work :-), and it's necessary to swap
cable types until it
does.
I've never actually had a problem with this.
My cabinets come out to ports on the bulkhead of the cabinet.
(RA7x and RA9x drives, - same for RA82's when I was still running them.
They are, (rummage, rummage) uh, ok, the connectors for the SA70
enclosures
that hold the RA7x drives are a white cable with a 37 pin d connector
that fans out
to 4 SDI bulkhead connectors. I put a black cable from there to either
a
KDB50 or the HSC70 and they work.
The RA8x drive cabinet cables are black, and go to a bulkhead connector.
Black from there to
the HSC or KDB50 works.
I have another RA9x cabinet at home but I *think* it has white cables in
it, I'll take a look later.
Black cable from there to the HSC or KDB50.
ISTR that I have also gone direct from an RA90 with a black cable to a
KDB50, and that worked too.
Are you not holding your mouth at the correct angle? ;^)
I've tried to make sense of the cable part no's, but there seems to be
several (length is a factor obviously)
different numbers and it's hard to tell what's what.
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
Computer Systems Manager
Saint Mark's College
Port Pirie,
South Australia
geoffrob(a)stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au
netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au
ICQ: 1970476
12:22 p.m.
On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 08:00:39PM +0000, Tony Duell wrote:
[re DZ11A]
That last
cable has one connector that connects to the wires in a different order
to do a second 'mirror flip'.
Yeah, that's the bastard!! I went back and forth a bunch of times to Heffron's
(where I bought the DZ) trying to sort this out, they started talking about
a "mirror image" cable but I forget whether they ever actually produced
one, or maybe I just bypassed the noise supressor brick. That was after
I removed the IDC connector and recrimped it on the other side, thinking
it would help, but of course nothing changed. The whole thing was a huge
pain, especially considering I paid $675 for the DZ11A! In 1985 that is,
it cost me most of a summer's work to get a board which is free these days.
My 11/34a had an EIA DZ in it when I bid on it but the weasels pulled it
out and sold it right before I picked the machine up, none of this should have
ever happened!
John Wilson
D Bit
9044
days inactive
9044
days old
7 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com -
geoffrob＠stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au -
wilson＠dbit.dbit.com