At 08:28 PM 6/3/2003 +0200, Jochen Kunz wrote: There are two volumes to the RL01/RL02 manual set. The one you mention is Volume I and the Technical Manual is Volume II EK-RL122-TM-001. --tom

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Tony Duell wrote: Is there a similar document for the RL8A, RL11, RLV11 or RLV12? I'd really like to get enough documentation together to build a controller that can work with other machines (maybe ISA bus, or more likely a microcontroller with a nice sized chunk of cache ram and a serial port) to facilitate getting data onto/off of RL02 disks. Really, I'm just looking for the microcode PROM dump, or specs on the drive<->controller bus that are detailed enough to contain a 'protocol description'. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS Information Technology at Purdue Research Computing and Storage http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Jerome H. Fine wrote: That doesn't bother me. I'm just looking for the simplest implementation that'll allow me to connect an RL01/02 to a PeeCee or other non [Q/UNI/OMNI]BUS machine. I'm not interested in practicality as much and the fun of running the thing. This is the same reason I want a (non slot load) 9track tape drive, and an RM0x-style 'washing machine' disk drive. I rather not play with something that 'speedy' yet. I'd rather work up of jumping in head first. That would be interesting, but IDE disks are too small to play with. ;o) But it would be nice to stick a nice "small" 1-10GB disk on a QBUS machine of mine without using up my QBUS MSCP SCSI controller. As I remember though, the hard part about making QBUS things was finding the bus driver chips - unless you wanted to sever them off of working boards... which I'm not inclined to do at the moment. Thanks for the suggestions anyhow. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS Information Technology at Purdue Research Computing and Storage http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/

--- "Peter C. Wallace" &lt;pcw(a)mesanet.com&gt; wrote: Full specs of the Qbus are available to evaluate a discrete replacement, but I know that some boards used 74LS240s in lieu of DC005 chips, etc. There are two aspects of attaching third-party devices to a DEC bus: bus drivers and bus receivers. Receivers are the more critical item if you are planning on deploying the device in a marginal backplane. Some of DEC's solutions included hand-selecting 74-series chips for low leakage current as well as a fistful of custom bus chips. In a single 9-slot "standard" Qbus backplane, you can get away with murder. It's when you want to have two or three loaded backplanes chained together that things get "interesting". Same goes for Unibus and OMNIBUS. At 25% of "max expansion", out of spec parts might not drag you down. Start filling the box and attaching it to long cables and you will probably have a different experience. I have plenty of 8641s, but not many of the other chips of the day (8881s, 8837s, etc.) I'm more interested in OMNIBUS attachment than Qbus attachment. I do have plenty of Unibus interface ICs (new and used), from my massive COMBOARD stockpile. -ethan

At 07:05 PM 6/4/03 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: A quick look on www.pricegrabber.com turned up 38 current motherboards with isa slots.

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Fritz Chwolka wrote: I already have copies of those, and IIRC, they don't have any specs on the control 'messages' passed between things, a PROM dump, or anything else that is helpful for figuring out how to send commands to the drive. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS Information Technology at Purdue Research Computing and Storage http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/

--- Tony Duell &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; wrote: If you are going to do that, why not use a DEC CPU? It's a nice idea and all, but at that point, wouldn't a real PDP-11 be easier to talk to (and not much more expensive than a box with a controller and some RAM)? Why not just use a PDP-11/53 CPU board with local serial and on-board RAM? The trick then would be to whip up some kind of protocol between the PeeCee and the PDP-11 to manipulate the disk registers and fetch blocks on command. If you wanted something to transfer blocks faster, there are DRV11s that could blow the data out in parallel fashion. There's also the possibility of porting code from the 2BSD distribution to run out of a RAM disk... then you could even use existing drivers and talk to the PeeCee at a high level instead of proxy register tweaking. Except for the local RAM requirement for disk buffers, I could probably whip something together with a COMBOARD. Unfortunately for me, the model I'm most abundant in has COM5025 serial chip - the scarce models are later ones with a Zilog Z8530. If someone wants to design a microcontroller-based Qbus/Unibus register thumper from scratch, I'd consider building one. Best to define how to talk to it from the outside before getting too far along on the design. -ethan

--- Tony Duell &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; wrote: I understand. I'm both a software and a hardware hacker, so I don't mind moving the set-point over a bit for a combination solution. Overkill from one sense, but it depends on how elaborate you'd want it to be. True. Good reason. :-) Fair enough. I do both (plus VAXBI) since I used to make all of that kind of stuff for a living. Personally, I have a lot of experience with Qbus machines because that's what was popular when I began to take over the hardware department. I still love Unibus stuff, though. No doubt. I did a lot of stuff with the User Port on the PET and C-64 (the Simon clone from Byte, an external big-key keyboard, a 2-digit 7-segment display, a high-speed CBM interconnect, a rudimentary IEEE-488 tracer, etc.) Hmm... you'll laugh... my SBC-6120 w/IOB-6120 fits the bill... the IOB-6120 has 36 I/O lines that are designatable I, O or Z by PDP-8 IOTs, and a CF socket, and the base SBC-6120 has an IDE port. The CF cards/disks do not use a DOS-compatible partition scheme, but can be read/written-to by DOS utilities. I have a ZIP drive backpack battery that can power it, or I can drive it from the PS/2 port of my laptop. You could even modify the FPGA code to make the 36 I/O pins be something other than plain vanilla I/O lines, if that were necessary for timing reasons. I wonder how hard it would be to add an RL8A to the IOB-6120... I better finish assembling one first, before I start trying to enhance it. :-) -ethan

I expect that there are no more PCBs available (unless another run is done) but I think all the schematics and layouts are available so you can make your own. (Which reminds me, I need to get around to figuring out which parts I don't have lying around and then get around to ordering them otherwise I'll never built it!). Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

I haev the 2 halves in separate cabinets. The Unibus (quad height) board is in the 11/45's BA11-F, the Qbus (dual height) board is in the backplane of the MINC chassis, with a couple of 40 way ribbon cables linking them. Works fine (but then it's DEC, so it would :-)) When I started puitting this machine together, I didn't have an RL11. The RLV11 and RL01s came with the MINC, and one reason for this set-up was to get RL drives on the 11/45. Now I have a couple of real RL11s. I really should reconfigure it one day... Incidentally, I once repaired a DEC gamma-11, which is a medical imaging display system. It's an 11/34 with a VS60 in it, and lots of custom I/O cards. Some of those are Q-bus. There was a 5.25" expanison box with 2 quad backplanes in it. One was Unibus, the other Qbus, and there was a DW11-B linking them. Made me do a double-take when I first pulled it out! That reminds me. I must get the I2S displays running again (512*512*30 bits (or 24 bits), with some local intellegence...) I never much cared for the 11/24. Having the CPU in a few custom LSI chips spoils the fun. I must have another go with the 11/44, though... I got a boatload of comms cards in a clearout. DUP11s, DMC11s, DMR11s, a KMC11, etc. Even a couple of DX11s (not, that's not a typo for RX11). Pity I've not nothing to connect the latter to. Ah.... [...] SMT assemnly/rework has never really bothered me. The first chip I did was a bit nerve-wracking, but I soon got used to it... -tony