9 Nov
2007
9 Nov
'07
10:09 a.m.
I have a drive and controller that Don Maslin gave me
supposedly from
a Tek terminal of some sort. It's a Wangtek drive and a like-sized
controller board with an 8085 on it. Interfaces on both ends are 50
conductor--if the computer side was something like SASI, it wouldn't
surprise me--I've never had to use it. The pinch roller in the drive
is in pretty bad shape now, though that could be dealt with without
too much trouble, I imagine. I wonder if the drive-side interface
isn't QIC-36, which would mean that there are PC-based controllers
available for it.
--
The tape drive in a 405x predates QIC. The head is fixed in place and
uses one track for clock and one for data. It is more similar to digital
cassettes than the later QIC drives.
9 Nov
9 Nov
10:24 a.m.
On 9 Nov 2007 at 10:09, Al Kossow wrote:
The tape drive in a 405x predates QIC. The head is
fixed in place and
uses one track for clock and one for data. It is more similar to digital
cassettes than the later QIC drives.
The drive I have is a Wangtek 54590, circa 1983 and the head assembly
is definitely on a stepper. I wonder what piece of Tek gear it's
from then?
Cheers,
Chuck
11:57 a.m.
Probably a Tektronix 4132. These were UNIX workstations based on the
National 32016 CPU, running a derivative of Berkeley 4.2 UNIX. The
4132 had a built-in Wangtek QIC-24 drive, with a special interface board
(QIC-24 on one end, and SCSI on the other end) made by Adaptec that
allowed the drive to sit on the built-in SCSI bus.
These drives would use DC300-A tapes. I believe that DC600's would also
work, but there were occasional issues with the tapes getting tangled
because of the much thinner tape in the DC600 cartridges.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 10:24 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Tek 405x tape drives
On 9 Nov 2007 at 10:09, Al Kossow wrote:
The tape drive in a 405x predates QIC. The head
is fixed in
place and
uses one track for clock and one for data. It is
more similar to
digital cassettes than the later QIC drives.
The drive I have is a Wangtek 54590, circa 1983 and the head
assembly is definitely on a stepper. I wonder what piece of
Tek gear it's from then?
Cheers,
Chuck
2:22 p.m.
On 9 Nov 2007 at 11:57, Rick Bensene wrote:
Probably a Tektronix 4132. These were UNIX
workstations based on the
National 32016 CPU, running a derivative of Berkeley 4.2 UNIX. The
4132 had a built-in Wangtek QIC-24 drive, with a special interface board
(QIC-24 on one end, and SCSI on the other end) made by Adaptec that
allowed the drive to sit on the built-in SCSI bus.
I'm 99 and 44/100ths percent certain that's not it. The controller
is definitely a Wangtek item (no jumpers on it as one might expect
with a SCSI interface), labeled WT05ZK and pretty much the same chip
inventory, sans ISA interface, as my Wangtek QIC-36 ISA controller.
The EPROM has the legend "Q11/24 9TRK", which I'm taking to mean that
the controller supports the 4-track QIC-11 and 9-track QIC-24
standards.
I'm guessing that the interface is QIC-36, given the age of the drive
and the lack of any "smarts" on its PCB. I've got a Caliper QIC-36
drive here with good innards that I might use to check this.
Given that it's a Wangtek controller, I wonder if the output side's
not QIC-02. Anyone know of an easy way to tell without toasting the
thing?
Cheers,
Chuck
5:52 p.m.
The tape drive in a 405x predates QIC. The head is
fixed in place and
uses one track for clock and one for data. It is more similar to digital
cassettes than the later QIC drives.
I thought, from a brief look at a friend's 4052 service manual (how I
wish I had a 405x myself...), that it was 2 tracks, a transition on one
is a '0' and a transition on the other is a '1' (And a transition on both
together is a marker?). _Very_ like the BMS digital cassetes I use.
-tony
10 Nov
10 Nov
2:02 a.m.
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007, Tony Duell wrote:
I thought, from a brief look at a friend's 4052
service manual (how I
wish I had a 405x myself...), that it was 2 tracks, a transition on one
is a '0' and a transition on the other is a '1' (And a transition on
both
together is a marker?). _Very_ like the BMS digital cassetes I use.
Yes, that's how it is described in the 4051 service manual. BTW the IBM
5100/5110 tape drive has a two tracks head, too. The difference is that
one head is used for header records and the other for data records. They
are used alternatively.
Christian
6256
days inactive
6257
days old
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