28 Aug
2013
28 Aug
'13
11:34 a.m.
I am looking for a working TK-50 drive. Mine is giving me a "not ready" on
the system. Is there any documentation out there on these tape drives? Is
there a way to emulate these?
Hutch
29 Aug
29 Aug
6:45 a.m.
On 2013-08-28 12:34, Hutch wrote:
I am looking for a working TK-50 drive. Mine is giving
me a "not ready" on
the system.
Just clean it ...
Is there any documentation out there on these tape
drives? Is
There is still a short FAQ at:
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/tk50.html
there a way to emulate these?
What do you mean by "emulate"?
Something which plugs in into a TQK50/TQK70 and pretends
to be a tape drive?
Or a board, which talks TMSCP, and looks to the OS like a tape drive?
7:26 a.m.
emanuel stiebler wrote:
On 2013-08-28
12:34, Hutch wrote:
I am looking for a working TK-50 drive. Mine is
giving me a "not
ready" on
the system.
Just clean it ... Is there any
documentation out there on these tape drives? Is
There is still a short FAQ at:
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/tk50.html
there a way to emulate these?
What do you mean by "emulate"?
Something which plugs in into a TQK50/TQK70 and pretends
to be a tape drive?
Or a board, which talks TMSCP, and looks to the OS like a tape drive? 
7:52 a.m.
On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Jerome H. Fine <jhfinedp3k at compsys.to>wrote:
I normally use OLD (very rare and have been unable to
find
them any longer) wooden Q-tips.
In the US, try McMaster-Carr: http://www.mcmaster.com/#cotton-swabs/=o9xphz
-Jon
9:31 a.m.
On 08/29/2013 07:26 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
I normally use OLD (very rare and have been unable to
find
them any longer) wooden Q-tips. I imagine that the cardboard
ones are almost as good. Squirt a bit of isoproponal on the tip
of the Q-tip and remove the junk from the head. Sometimes,
it is necessary to clean the head after every tape. In that case,
just leave the TK50 drive on the bench connected to the PDP-11,
but ready to be cleaned each time. The cleaning time is less than
five minutes once there is access to the tape head. It is usually
necessary to remove the TK50 media first.
Those are still very much around and currently manufactured. I use them
on 8" disk drive heads quite a bit. For example:
http://www.amazon.com/100pc-X-Long-Cotton-Swabs-Applicators/dp/B005IHM9FE
eBay also shows several offerings. The search term that I used was
"long wood cotton swabs". I'd be surprised if your local druggist could
not manage to locate a batch for you.
--Chuck
10:08 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 9:32 AM
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: TK-50 drive information
On 08/29/2013 07:26 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
It's also my experience that TK-50s are very fussy about cleanliness. I actually have
the DEC cleaning kit - but I fret about using it because when it's gone, it's
gone. The cleaning "thing" is somewhat unique. So Q-tips is a far more
sustainable solution. :-) -- Ian
I normally use OLD (very rare and have been
unable to find them any
longer) wooden Q-tips. I imagine that the cardboard ones are almost
as good. Squirt a bit of isoproponal on the tip of the Q-tip and
remove the junk from the head. Sometimes, it is necessary to clean
the head after every tape. In that case, just leave the TK50 drive on
the bench connected to the PDP-11, but ready to be cleaned each time.
The cleaning time is less than five minutes once there is access to
the tape head. It is usually necessary to remove the TK50 media
first.
Those are still very much around and currently manufactured. I use them on
8" disk drive heads quite a bit. For example:
http://www.amazon.com/100pc-X-Long-Cotton-Swabs-
Applicators/dp/B005IHM9FE
eBay also shows several offerings. The search term that I used was "long
wood cotton swabs". I'd be surprised if your local druggist could not manage
to locate a batch for you.
11:04 a.m.
On Aug 29, 2013, at 12:31, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 08/29/2013 07:26 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
Absolutely. We use them to clean flux off reworked boards all
the time. Not sure where we get them from, but there's no
real shortage.
- Dave
I normally use OLD (very rare and have been
unable to find
them any longer) wooden Q-tips. I imagine that the cardboard
ones are almost as good. Squirt a bit of isoproponal on the tip
of the Q-tip and remove the junk from the head. Sometimes,
it is necessary to clean the head after every tape. In that case,
just leave the TK50 drive on the bench connected to the PDP-11,
but ready to be cleaned each time. The cleaning time is less than
five minutes once there is access to the tape head. It is usually
necessary to remove the TK50 media first.
Those are still very much around and currently manufactured. I use them on 8" disk
drive heads quite a bit.
30 Aug
30 Aug
6:40 a.m.
On Aug 29, 2013, at 6:17 PM, emanuel stiebler <emu at e-bbes.com> wrote:
< What do you mean by "emulate"?
<Something which plugs in into a TQK50/TQK70 and pretends
<to be a tape drive?
Pretends to be a tape drive would be what I would prefer. Similar to the HCX2001 floppy
drive emulator that uses an SD card for storage.
Or a board, which talks TMSCP, and looks to the OS
like a tape drive?
I thought of purchasing a TK50 external drive to replace my non operating internal
drive in my microVax ii , so that I could somehow i could use some other system and
storage media( hard disk or CD) to image the tape. I have had a few tapes break in the
past and lost the data.
2:32 p.m.
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Hutch <shutchman at gmail.com> wrote:
Pretends to be a tape drive would be what I would prefer. Similar to the HCX2001 floppy
drive emulator that uses an SD card for storage.
Here's a way-off idea from existing components... I wonder if one
could attach a SCSI<->IDE adapter to a 3rd Party TMSCP controller? If
so, then one might be able to _then_ hang an IDE<->CF interface off of
that. It would be one CF card==one "tape", but it would work. A
"real" TK50 stores up to 95MB (if the controller keeps the tape fed),
so a 128MB CF card would hold an entire tape's worth of bytes (unless
somehow blocking sizes messed things up and it took a larger card to
digest what was thrown at it).
I can see three reasons for emulating a TK50 (perhaps there are
more)... 1) installing from tape image files, 2) simple
no-moving-parts backup and restore of a Qbus MicroVAX (which should
not cause odd blocking issues) and 3) bootable diagnostics from an
image file (which _might_ have blocking issues - bootable magtape
certainly had variable block sizes and was slightly non-trivial to
write tapes, therefore). Is one of those your primary goal, or is it
something else?
-ethan
3:41 p.m.
On 30 Aug 2013, at 17:32, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Hutch <shutchman at gmail.com> wrote:
I _THINK_ you?d need SCSI<->ATAPI, no?
Pretends to be a tape drive would be what I would prefer. Similar to the HCX2001 floppy
drive emulator that uses an SD card for storage.
Here's a way-off idea from existing components... I wonder if one
could attach a SCSI<->IDE adapter to a 3rd Party TMSCP controller? If
so, then one might be able to _then_ hang an IDE<->CF interface off of
that. It would be one CF card==one "tape", but it would work. A
"real" TK50 stores up to 95MB (if the controller keeps the tape fed),
so a 128MB CF card would hold an entire tape's worth of bytes (unless
somehow blocking sizes messed things up and it took a larger card to
digest what was thrown at it).
I can see three reasons for emulating a TK50 (perhaps there are
more)... 1) installing from tape image files, 2) simple
no-moving-parts backup and restore of a Qbus MicroVAX (which should
not cause odd blocking issues) and 3) bootable diagnostics from an
image file (which _might_ have blocking issues - bootable magtape
certainly had variable block sizes and was slightly non-trivial to
write tapes, therefore). Is one of those your primary goal, or is it
something else?
-ethan
4:32 p.m.
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a way-off idea from existing components... I wonder if one
could attach a SCSI<->IDE adapter to a 3rd Party TMSCP controller? If
so, then one might be able to _then_ hang an IDE<->CF interface off of
that. It would be one CF card==one "tape", but it would work. A
"real" TK50 stores up to 95MB (if the controller keeps the tape fed),
so a 128MB CF card would hold an entire tape's worth of bytes (unless
somehow blocking sizes messed things up and it took a larger card to
digest what was thrown at it).
I wonder how expensive these devices are. I suppose if you can't find
pricing information on the net anywhere and have to call up someone
for pricing information they are probably too expensive for anyone
here, although from the product photos the actual production cost
probably isn't too high.
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/SCSI_Bridge_Emulators_to_CF/index.php
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/Datasheets/SCSI_Bridge_Emulator_to_CF/PERTEC…
6:14 p.m.
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013, Glen Slick wrote:
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Ethan Dicks
<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
ACARD made a number of ATA<->SCSI bridge devices that would allow an
ATA/IDE device to be used on a SCSI bus, but last I checked they were
reselling used for ~$150-200 USD. I eventually gave up on the idea of
hanging one of these along with a CompactFlash to IDE adapter off an 8-bit
ISA SCSI card that I have.
Here's a way-off idea from existing components... I wonder if one
could attach a SCSI<->IDE adapter to a 3rd Party TMSCP controller? If
so, then one might be able to _then_ hang an IDE<->CF interface off of
that. It would be one CF card==one "tape", but it would work. A
"real" TK50 stores up to 95MB (if the controller keeps the tape fed),
so a 128MB CF card would hold an entire tape's worth of bytes (unless
somehow blocking sizes messed things up and it took a larger card to
digest what was thrown at it).
I wonder how expensive these devices are. I suppose if you can't find
pricing information on the net anywhere and have to call up someone
for pricing information they are probably too expensive for anyone
here, although from the product photos the actual production cost
probably isn't too high.
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/SCSI_Bridge_Emulators_to_CF/index.php
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/Datasheets/SCSI_Bridge_Emulator_to_CF/PERTEC…
31 Aug
31 Aug
1:16 a.m.
Andrew Lynch (on this list) is taking care of a good scsi emulator
project, google for n8vem scsi.
---
Enviado do meu Motorola PT550
Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tothwolf" <tothwolf at concentric.net>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2013 10:14 PM
Subject: Re: TK-50 drive information
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013, Glen Slick wrote:
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Ethan Dicks
<ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
ACARD made a number of ATA<->SCSI bridge devices that would allow an
ATA/IDE device to be used on a SCSI bus, but last I checked they were
reselling used for ~$150-200 USD. I eventually gave up on the idea of
hanging one of these along with a CompactFlash to IDE adapter off an 8-bit
ISA SCSI card that I have.
Here's a way-off idea from existing components... I wonder if one
could attach a SCSI<->IDE adapter to a 3rd Party TMSCP controller? If
so, then one might be able to _then_ hang an IDE<->CF interface off of
that. It would be one CF card==one "tape", but it would work. A
"real" TK50 stores up to 95MB (if the controller keeps the tape fed),
so a 128MB CF card would hold an entire tape's worth of bytes (unless
somehow blocking sizes messed things up and it took a larger card to
digest what was thrown at it).
I wonder how expensive these devices are. I suppose if you can't find
pricing information on the net anywhere and have to call up someone
for pricing information they are probably too expensive for anyone
here, although from the product photos the actual production cost
probably isn't too high.
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/SCSI_Bridge_Emulators_to_CF/index.php
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/Datasheets/SCSI_Bridge_Emulator_to_CF/PERTEC…
noon
On Sat, 31 Aug 2013, Alexandre Souza wrote:
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013, Tothwolf wrote:
Yes, the SCSI to IDE adapter is an interesting project. I passed up on
building one of the boards from first batch due to my current backlog of
other projects. I'm also not sure if it would work for my purposes due to
some of the design limitations, but I'll probably try one at a later date
anyway just to see what it does. I also have some XT-IDE boards from
Andrew that I've not yet built (in my project queue) which will do what I
originally intended to do with an 8-bit ISA SCSI card, SCSI to IDE bridge,
and a CompactFlash card.
If someone could come up with an inexpensive clone of what ACARD does with
their SCSI to IDE and SCSI to SATA bridges, they would likely sell very
well. ACARD's prices for these are simply too high which keeps them out of
reach of the typical hobbyist. There is going to be more and more demand
for such bridge devices in the future, especially if they don't have any
major performance bottlenecks and can operate at or near the same speed as
the SCSI bus.
As SCSI drives eventually fail, it would be nice to be able to replace
them with modern SATA drives, but one of the major challenges may be all
the different SCSI interfaces. It might not be possible for example to
physically fit a bridge board with a narrow SCSI connector along with a
narrow to wide adapter + high byte terminator into an existing drive sled,
so there would need to be many different bridge versions for the different
SCSI interfaces.
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013, Glen Slick wrote:
Andrew Lynch (on this list) is taking care of a good scsi emulator
project, google for n8vem scsi. On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Ethan Dicks
<ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
ACARD made a number of ATA<->SCSI bridge devices that would allow an
ATA/IDE device to be used on a SCSI bus, but last I checked they were
reselling used for ~$150-200 USD. I eventually gave up on the idea of
hanging one of these along with a CompactFlash to IDE adapter off an 8-bit
ISA SCSI card that I have.
Here's a way-off idea from existing components... I wonder if one
could attach a SCSI<->IDE adapter to a 3rd Party TMSCP controller? If
so, then one might be able to _then_ hang an IDE<->CF interface off of
that. It would be one CF card==one "tape", but it would work. A
"real" TK50 stores up to 95MB (if the controller keeps the tape fed),
so a 128MB CF card would hold an entire tape's worth of bytes (unless
somehow blocking sizes messed things up and it took a larger card to
digest what was thrown at it).
I wonder how expensive these devices are. I suppose if you can't find
pricing information on the net anywhere and have to call up someone
for pricing information they are probably too expensive for anyone
here, although from the product photos the actual production cost
probably isn't too high.
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/SCSI_Bridge_Emulators_to_CF/index.php
http://www.ssd.gb.com/Products/Datasheets/SCSI_Bridge_Emulator_to_CF/PERTEC…
29 Aug
29 Aug
8:53 a.m.
The maintenance manuals and engineering drawings for the TK50 are
available on bitsavers, at:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/magtape/tk50/
On 8/28/2013 1:34 PM, Hutch wrote:
I am looking for a working TK-50 drive. Mine is giving
me a "not ready" on
the system. Is there any documentation out there on these tape drives? Is
there a way to emulate these?
Hutch
31 Aug
31 Aug
3:24 a.m.
On 2013-08-29 09:53, Jay Jaeger wrote:
The maintenance manuals and engineering drawings for
the TK50 are
available on bitsavers, at:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/magtape/tk50/
Is there a TK70 technical manual somewhere scanned?
4173
days inactive
4176
days old
15 comments
13 participants
participants (13)
-
alexandre.tabajara＠gmail.com -
auringer＠tds.net -
b4＠gewt.net -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cube1＠charter.net -
emu＠e-bbes.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
fraveydank＠gmail.com -
glen.slick＠gmail.com -
IanK＠LivingComputerMuseum.org -
jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to -
shutchman＠gmail.com -
tothwolf＠concentric.net