I've heard that suggestion too... The cable from the CPU would have to have two connectors on the RL02 end; one would plug into the drive's logic board, and the other to the outbound connector, where you can plug in the terminator. AFAIK that cable is purely a bus (i.e. no radial per-drive wires), so you should just be able to run it to the second connector, no issue. However, I'm too lazy to check to make sure that's absolutely 100% accurate. :-) I think you mean a Berg connector which will plug directly into the RLV11, not "ground lug", right? Yes, if you don't have a cab kit, that's the cable you need. It's not a ribbon cable, but a round cable (the connectors the drives use only come in regular cable form, not ribbon cable - AFAIK). RLOx cables of _any_ kind are very hard to find. There are discussions under way about making new ones; there is a supply (used) of the wierd-ass connector that plugs into the back of the drive which could be used. Others have pointed you at Douglas; here's the page for all their extender cards: http://www.douglas.com/index.php/off-the-shelf-solutions/bread-boards-by-fu… which includes a hex, but those aren't any use (that I can think of) to people with QBUS machines. (Useful things to have it you're trying to maintain a vintage PDP-11; one is, perforce, forced to become one's own Field Circus person - unless you're lucky and happen to live close to a PDP-11 hardware expert who's willing to come salve one's machine.) Well, but he might still have a problem on them. Although fixing such would be a challenge... Noel

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 12:52 PM, Ben Sinclair <ben at bensinclair.com> wrote: Yes. That's a BC80M, but it's not a ribbon cable on the controller end, it's the splayed end of the round cable (12 pair + 1, IIRC) with crimped gold pins and a 44 position Berg connector. You can use those if you don't have a cab kit (which is really just a bracket for the rack, a 40-pin ribbon cable, and one of those odd ZIF connectors like on the back of the drive to transition from flat cable to round cable) but then you'll need a drive-to-drive RL cable. It's been a long time since these were easy to find. -ethan

I only have one RL02, so I think that cable should work. I ordered it anyway!

from running the BC80M into a BA23, etc, and only pushing shielded

I'll keep an eye out for other controllers, but I think I will order an extender and attempt to debug the one I have.

When you had machines with an RL-drive "internal", you normally did not use a cab kit. That was for external drives. The same is true for all other DEC drives I know as well. I've certainly seen direct cabling internally for SDI drives as well as external cabling for RX50 and TK50.

The RL01 version of the MINC doesn;t use the cab kit. It uses that Berg-RL cable from the RLV11 in the MINC chassis to the first RL01, then the normal RL-RL cable between the drives. I am not sure if that's an 'internal drive', the 2 RL01s are fitted into a small rack cabinet, the MINC chassis fits on top held down by 2 captive screws, it doesn't mount on slide rails or anything like that. Conversely the VAX11/730 has an RL02 controller as part of the IDC (Integrated Disk Controller, it talks directly to internal CPU buses rather than sitting on the Unibus). Here, there is a Berg-Berg cable from the IDC to a connector on the CPU distribution panel (which also carries the console terminal connector, etc) and then RL-RL cables from that to the first RL02 and between RL02s. Again, I don't know if you call that an internal drive, the CPU is a separate rackmouting box, the drive is another rackmounitng unit, but it was common to have 'packaged' configurations of this machine, some of which included RL02s.

from DEC.